Mona Kareem
Photo courtesy of Mona Kareem
Bio
Mona Kareem is a poet, translator, and literary scholar who is currently a translator-in-residence at Princeton University. She is the author of three poetry collections, and most recently, the chapbook Femme Ghosts. Her English translation of Ashraf Fayadh's Instructions Within was nominated for the Best Translated Book Award in 2016, and was reprinted by English PEN in 2017. Her Arabic translation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred was recently published by Kuwaiti publisher Takween. Kareem holds a PhD in comparative literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She has held fellowships and residencies with Poetry International, Arab-American National Museum, Norwich Center, and Forum Transregionale Studien.
Project Description
To support the translation from the Arabic of the poetry collection Falcon with Sun Overhead by Ra'ad Abdulqadir. Considered a pioneer of the Iraqi prose poem, Abdulqadir (1953-2003) was the author of five poetry collections, two of which were published posthumously. His often-experimental work took on many forms and styles—from compact symbolism to free verse poetry—and spoke to an entire generation of young Arab poets who emerged in the 1990s. This selection will draw from Qadir's later work which takes on a more conversational tone and will be the first full-length English translation of his work.
I first read the work of Ra’ad Abdulqadir in 2005 when it was circulating on the internet among his admirers. Like many poets of my generation, I was enchanted by his cinematic vision and ability to capture tragedy with a subtle poetics. A few years back, I began to translate Ra’ad’s poems in my own free time, knowing how difficult it is to locate resources for poetry translation projects. Since then, I’ve completed a translated selection of his poems, titled Except for This Unseen Thread. Now, this generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts will not only allow me to translate his most prominent collection Falcon with Sun Overhead, it will also draw necessary attention to the work of this unique Iraqi poet, and help introduce him to the American poetry reader.