Revolt Against the Sun: In Conversation with Emily Drumsta on translating Iraqi Avant-Garde poet Nazik al-Mala’ikah

NB: All timed advertised are GMT (British Summer Time)

Speaker: Emily Drumsta (Brown University)

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The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ikah was one of the most important Arab poets of the twentieth century. A pioneer of free verse poetry, over the course of her career, she transformed the landscape of modern Arabic literature and culture. Revolt Against the Sun presents a selection of Nazik al-Mala’ikah’s poetry in English for the first time.

Join us for a conversation with the translator, Dr Emily Drumsta, who will read from the collection and discuss the translation process with Dr Annie Webster, chaired by Professor Wen-chin Ouyang.

About the Author

Emily Drumsta is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. Her current book project, Ways of Seeking, explores the history of detection and investigation in twentieth-century fictions from the Arab world. Her translation, Revolt Against the Sun: The Selected Poetry of Nazik al-Mala'ikah , was the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation prize in 2018. She is a co-founder of Tahrir Documents, an online archive of newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, and other ephemera collected in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt

Contact email: aw74@soas.ac.uk

This event is co-hosted by CCLPS (Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies) and CTS (Centre for Translation Studies) at SOAS.