Selected Poems: 2005 - 2019

Selected Poems: 2005-2019
Translated into Arabic by Ahmad M. Ahmad, 2022

Ahmad M. Ahmad on Translating Nathalie Handal into Arabic — Arablit & Arablit Quarterly

Nathalie is a multi-voice, multicultural poet, with many layers of emotions. Her inner poetic voice is always colorful and diverse, not only between one book and another, or between one poem and another, but between one line and another, so that the totality of coloration and change constitutes a captivating symphonic effect, unique in flavor.

The biggest difference is Nathalie’s poetic techniques are unfamiliar in Arabic. As a translator, I have tried to communicate these techniques faithfully, to preserve the poet’s tone and breath, to preserve the fine, close thread that connects the technique to the essence of the poem.

As for the experience of living the poems, I claim that if Nathalie had written in Arabic, she would have written as I translated them. And here I remember the comment of the late Amjad Nasser about my translations of Nathalie: “It seems that you, Ahmed, love her work more than you do that of other poets…” I experience Le Plaisir du texte de Roland Barthes while translating Nathalie’s work.

My acoustic acquaintance with Nathalie gave my translation of her poems another dimension: from her throat comes all that nostalgia that warms me and makes me feel that I am not a stranger, that the world will be better than it is now.