Arabic Poems in Translation, Part 1

كيف سنكتب عن الحب – الجزء 1 \ فيوليت أو الجلد - لبنان


!نحن الذين فقدنا أطرافنا في حروب صغيرة
نحن الذين تركنا الأشباح تلهو في غرفنا المعتمة
!وجعلنا من النوم ملتقى لندامى الغياب
كيف سنذهب الى الحب بأقدامنا القصيرة
نحن الذين جلسنا طويلا خلف النوافذ
.ثم ارتبكنا كطَرَقات على أبواب مخلعة
كيف سنتذوق بكل هدوء
!عسل كل هؤلاء الشعراء
,نحن أبناء اللغة المُرّة
أصحاب الندوب الغائرة
!حتى آخر الموت

How to Write of Love – part 1 
by Violette Abou Jalad 
Co-Translated by Abeer Abdulkareem and Susan Rich


We who lose limbs in undeclared wars,
who hear ghosts play catch in darkened rooms—
we sleep on clean sheets, mourning our past selves.

How shall we make love with these new limbs?
We who long sat aimless behind closed windows—
who lay awake confused by insistent knocking on unhinged doors.

Now we no longer taste the honeyed words
of the poets. We who still hold close the bitter language
of wars in open wounds, holding it until our final breath.

Violette Abu Jalad is from Lebanon. Her works include Sleep Hunter in 2004, The Last Violet in 2006, Time of the Text . . . Time for the Body, published by Fadhaa’aat Printing House in Amman, Jordan, in 2012, I Accompany the Nuts to Their Minds, also published by Fadhaa’aat Printing House, in 2015, No One Lives on This Planet Except Me, published by Alka Printing House in 2017 and soon to be published in French by Lanskin Printing House, and Suspicions, published by Ahliyya Printing House, Amman, Jordan. She has participated in cultural forums in Amman, Baghdad, Tunisia, Algeria, Paris, and Honduras. 

Abeer Abdulkareem is a translator, researcher, foreign language instructor and linguist. She is the managing editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo, 2026). Prior to joining the Her Story Is collective, Abeer worked as a Senior Language Researcher at Language Research Center in Maryland, where she wrote several books on Arabic language and its dialects. Prior to this role, she taught Arabic language at Dartmouth College. She holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, she speaks Arabic (MSA, Iraqi, Levantine, and Egyptian).

Pacific Northwest poet, Susan Rich, is the author of nine books including: Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press, 2024) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2022). She is co-editor of Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems and The Strangest of Theatres: Writing Across Borders. Her work appears in the Los Angeles Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review and elsewhere. Rich has earned awards from PEN USA, Fulbright Foundation, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). Her anthology, Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is due this year (Raven Chronicles Press).

الموسيقار والعصفور \ خولة جاسم الناهي - العراق
 
 
:لنعقد اتفاقاً يا صديقي -
أنت تعلمني الغناء
وأنا أهبك الحرية
ما رأيك أن تكتفي بالعزف -
وأنا من سيعلمك الحرية
فالسجن ليس إلا ما تضع نفسك فيه
وذو الأجنحة سيطير حتى في الأقفاص

The Musician and the Sparrow 
by Khawla Jasim Alnahi 
Co-Translated by Abeer Abdulkareem Dzvinia Orlowsky


—Let’s agree, my friend:
You teach me to sing
And I’ll gift you with freedom

—How about you just play?
And I’ll be the one to teach you freedom
Prison is of your own making
Those with wings fly even in cages

Khawla Jasim Alnahi is from Iraq. She is a journalist, translator, and news editor. Her writings include two story collections: laa’iha bi-asmaa’ almalaa’ika (A List of Angels’ Names), in 2013, and jinuub khat 33 (Line 33 South), in 2019. Her story sahib almizan (The Scale Owner) was published in laa’ibu as-sard (Players of Narration) in Basra in 2015. She is a member of the Iraq Writers Union.

Abeer Abdulkareem is a translator, researcher, foreign language instructor and linguist. She is the managing editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo, 2026). Prior to joining the Her Story Is collective, Abeer worked as a Senior Language Researcher at Language Research Center in Maryland, where she wrote several books on Arabic language and its dialects. Prior to this role, she taught Arabic language at Dartmouth College. She holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, she speaks Arabic (MSA, Iraqi, Levantine, and Egyptian).

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Pushcart Prize poet, translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books. She has authored seven poetry collections with Carnegie Mellon University Press, including her most recent, Those Absences Now Closest, Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia’s co-translations from the Ukrainian of Natalka Bilotserkivets’s Eccentric Days of Hope & Sorrow was a finalist for the 2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize and winner of the 2020-2021 AAUS Prize for Translation. They received a 2024 NEA Translation Fellowship and were finalists for the 2025 PEN America Literary Award for their translation of Halyna Kruk’s Lost in Living (Lost Horse Press 2024)

20 August 2025