As the conflict in Israel and Gaza marks nearly one year, Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah, the artist-in-residence in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, arrived on campus Sept. 16 filled with sadness.
“I feel such a weight being in the walls of classrooms and campuses, and it’s a very sad reality,” Almallah said. In front of an intimate crowd in Lutnick Library, Almallah read from his two recent poetry collections: Bitter English, published in 2019, and Border Wisdom, published last year. Almallah has received the Edith Goldberg Paulson Memorial Prize for Creative Writing, and his sequence of poems titled Recourse won the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship.
Almallah was accompanied by his wife and translator, Huda Fakhreddine, an Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at Penn. Together, they read his poetry first in English and then in Arabic.
Associate Professor of Religion Guangtian Ha and Professor of Comparative Literature and English Maud McInerney initially organized the event for last April, but postponed it due to the encampments at Penn. The idea first emerged from Ha’s classes, which have included some of Fakhreddine’s Arabic translations. They have also been featured in the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities’ Poetry Reading Group.
“Given what’s happened in the West Bank and in Gaza, there is a need to create a breathing space on this campus, and poetry is that wonderous thing that can create that common space for grief, for anger, and for joy,” Ha says. “Ahmad is one of those poets who can manipulate language in that way.”
Having grown up in Palestine and come to America in 2000 for his undergraduate studies, Almallah’s poetry centers on language, diaspora, and his Palestinian identity. His poems are written in English, a choice that’s caused “loss and guilt,” he says about Bitter English.
“I like writing in English because it rubs me the wrong way and it brings this sharpness in just dealing with the world,” he says. “I think it’s more fitting in the practice to write poetry out of discomfort, and when you do that, there’s a lot more sparks in the process.”
Fakhreddine translates his poems into Arabic, which Almallah views as their “afterlife.” “When she brings them back to Arabic, there’s a completion in the circle of time,” he says. “We don’t know which one to end with and which one to start with.”
For Farkhreddine, translating Almallah’s poetry into Arabic feels like a homecoming of sorts.
“Translating Ahmad back into Arabic is as if revealing the original. It is a circle and has to do a lot with the immigrant experience of being uprooted but always looking for connection,” she says.
The event served as an intersection of interests for audience member Ethan Kang ’27. He became interested in Arabic after traveling to the United Arab Emirates to explore human rights with the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. Paired with the poetry class he’s taking this semester with Assistant Professor of English Elizabeth Kim, the event left him wanting to learn more.
“I really want to look into more Arabic poetry,” Kang says. “It’s a rich literary tradition that scholars nowadays don’t know and don’t realize.”