Literary Panel Discussion

This gathering of some of the Arab world's most critically acclaimed poets will address the state and future of poetry, the Arab world's most cherished and venerated art form. The poets will also give tribute to the legacy of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, one of the world's great modern poets. Event Timing: 90 minutes
 
Panel Moderator
Fady Joudah (Palestine/USA) is a Palestinian American poet, practicing physician, and poetry translator born in Austin, Texas. He has been a member of Doctors Without Borders since 2001, where he served in Zambia and in Darfur, Sudan. Joudah is the winner of the 2008 Saif Ghobash--Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for his translation of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish. The US edition was short-listed for PEN America's poetry in translation award. He was awarded the River City prize in 2004 and his first poetry collection, The Earth in the Attic, received the 2008 Yale Series for Younger Poets award.
 
Panel Speakers
Qassim Haddad (Bahrain) is a Bahraini poet whose collection of work is well known throughout the Arab world. In 1969, he co-founded the Bahraini Writers' Union and was Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal Kalimat. In 1994, Haddad created the most important Internet forum for Arabic poetry with the Web site www.jehat.com. In 2007, he created a controversial adaptation of Arabic classic Layla and Majnun with composer Marcel Khalifé. Haddad has received the Prize of the Lebanese Cultural Forum (Paris) and the 2002 Sultan al-Oweis Prize for Poetry.
 
Mohammed Bennis (Morocco) was born in Fez. In 1996, he co-founded the House of Poetry in Morocco, and until 2003 served as its president. Among the numerous awards he has received are Morocco's Grand Award for Creative Writing (1993); Al-Atlas Prize for Translation (Morocco, 2000); the city of Calopezzati literature award for Mediterranean Poetry (2006); the Feronia literary prize for poetry (2007) and the Sultan al-Oweis Prize (2007). Bennis was primarily responsible for the establishment in 2000 by UNESCO of an annual World Poetry Day on March 21.
 
Iman Mersal (Egypt) has published four collections of poetry in Arabic. Selected poems from Mersal's ouevre have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, and Italian. These are Not Oranges, My Love, a selection of her poems translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow Press in 2008. Mersal currently lives in Edmonton, Canada, where she is Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Alberta.

Part of ARABESQUE: Arts of the Arab World

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