US poetry greats to reach Arabic audience
New Arabic anthology from Abu Dhabi-based project, Kalima, to include poems from 15 US poets, including Anne Sexton, Charles Bukowski and Sylvia Plath
by Alison Flood
Sylvia Plath is one of 15 US poets due to appear in a new Arabic anthology.
The cream of modern American poetry, from Sylvia Plath to Charles Simic, is to be translated into Arabic as part of a project to widen the Arabic world’s access to foreign literature.
Fifteen American poets, also including Charles Bukowski, Robert Bly, Anne Sexton, Ted Kooser and Langston Hughes, have been selected by the Abu Dhabi-based project, Kalima – “word” in Arabic – to be included in a new Arabic anthology. “There is a real shortage of American poetry translated into Arabic, which is why we decided to do this,” said a spokesperson for the project.
Over 1000 poems are being translated for the anthology, including Bukowski’s “Love is a Dog from Hell”, Dorianne Laux’s “In a Room with a Rag in My Hand”, Simic’s “Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk” and Hughes’s “I, Too, Sing America”. “I am the darker brother,” writes Hughes. “They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes, / But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.”