Belongings

Notes

This was the third workshop we've devoted to the poetry of Abboud al Jabiri and, as with the others, it was a real pleasure to bring his poem into English. His poetry, unlike a good deal of poetry in Arabic, translates well into English. This is because it's relatively simple, relying on concrete imagery and eschewing complex metaphors.

As you'll see if you compare our final version with the literal translation prepared by Worod Musawi, we've stuck quite closely to her text.

However, there was one image, towards the end of the poem, which Worod translates as 'to free my fingers / From the rubber tree who planted above of the sky' which, however much we tried, we couldn't make sense of and get into good English - so we abandoned it as we felt it would have distorted our version. Sometimes translators have to make tough decisions!