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Mona Kareem on Translation as Kidnapping
About the episode
Mona Kareem’s essay “Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations” lit up debates among translators and poets. In this episode Kareem talks about poetry, the power dynamics of translation, and the relationship of both to migration, exile, self-censorship, and publication. She also reads from her poetry, both in her own translation and in translation by poet @SaraFarag.
Essays by Mona Kareem
Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations
Bidoon: A Cause and Its Literature Are Born
Mapping Exile: A Writer’s Story of Growing Up Stateless in Post-Gulf War Kuwait
Poetry by Mona Kareem
Eleven poems on Poetry International
Three poems in The Brooklyn Rail
More at Mona’s website, monakareem.blogspot.com/search/label/Poetry
Ahmed Naji’s essay Taming the Immigrant: Musings of a Writer in Exile
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