Description
The English debut of one of Greece's most radical and original poetic voices.
“…an explosive cadence… Khaleed’s sentiment toward the would-be aesthetes seems clear: ‘Fuck off, flower poets.’”—David Wallace, The New Yorker
“[Jazra Khaleed] stands up to fascism by writing and performing Greek-language poetry that is unmatched in technical bravura, emotional depth, and political urgency. He performs his poetry at a lightning clip — so fast the Nazis can barely keep up, let alone talk back — a hip-hop emcee in a fever.”—Max Ritvo, LA Review of Books
“…agitated and delirious and necessary.”—Lotte L.S, Mute
“As a whole, these translations point to the collective love that gave them shape — a love for Khaleed’s own Greek and for the Greek language more broadly…Thoughtful and linguistically careful, Khaleed’s English debut plants the right beat in our chests.” — Panagiota Stoltidou, Hopscotch Translation
“...these poems deserve their place in Poetry and American Poetry Review and in the curriculum of graduate schools, yet the project here aims beyond literary acceptance or enhanced status in the academy toward the gritty, unresolvable truth of the refugee experience. The voice here longs for all that the displaced long for—food, home, dignity, hope, justice.” — John Whalen, Colorado Review
Poetry.
Author Bio
Jazra Khaleed (born in Chechnya, 1979) is a poet, translator, and filmmaker. He is a Greek citizen and lives in Athens; he writes exclusively in Greek. His works are an indictment of fascism, social injustice, police brutality, and racism in contemporary Greece. His debut collection, was published in 2016, and his recent collection, (but is this poetry?), was published in 2020. His poems have been widely translated for publications in Europe, the US, Australia, and Asia, and have appeared in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and other publications. As a founding editor of the Athenian poetry magazine Teflon, and particularly through his own translations published there, he has introduced to a Greek readership the works of Amiri Baraka, Keston Sutherland, Etel Adnan, among many other American, British, Australian, Arab and German-language political and experimental poets. His short films have been screened at festivals such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival (USA), Experiments in Cinema (USA), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (Switzerland), Kasseler Dokfest (Germany), Entrevues Belfort (France), L'Alternativa (Spain) among others. The film rendition of his poem about the immigrant situation, "The Aegean or the Anus of Death," won prizes at the Paris Festival for Different and Experimental Cinema, the Zebra Poetry Film Festival, and the Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival.
Author City: Athens GRC
Karen Van Dyck's books include Kassandra and the Censors, The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding, The Scattered Papers of Penelope, Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry, and the co-edited Norton anthology, The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. Her essays, translations and poetry have appeared in The Paris Review, The Guardian, LARB, Poiitiki and Tender. She is founding director of Hellenic Studies at Columbia University where she teaches courses on translation, gender and Modern Greek literature.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA