A.D. White House, Cornell University
The event is Co-Sponsored by the following units:
Cornell's Society for the Humanities
Department of Near Eastern Studies
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, born 1941, died on August 9, 2008. He was and is one of the most important contemporary Arab poets. His poems are known throughout the Arab world and internationally. Darwish published more than thirty poetry and prose collections, which have been translated into thirty-five languages. He received several awards for his work, including the 1969 Lotus Prize of the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, the Lenin Peace Prize in 1983, France's Knighthood of Arts and Belles Lettres in 1997, the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2001, and the Prince Claus Fund Prize in 2004. In September, 2009, with the passage of a year, the Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM) will remember his work and its significance in an informal setting. The Iraqi poet, novelist, and translator Sinan Antoon will deliver a keynote address on Mahmoud Darwish's life and work. Professor Salah Hassan, Professor Deborah Starr, Reem Fadda and other community members will deliver readings of Darwish's poetry. There will also be excerpts from recordings of recitals delivered by Mahmoud Darwish himself. To conclude the occasion, the Cornell Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Ensemble will perform pieces from Marcel Khalife's collection of musical settings of Mahmoud Darwish's work. The memorial will be followed by a reception at the A.D. White House. All are welcome.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Sinan Antoon, Professor of Pre-Modern Arabo-Islamic Culture and Contemporary Arab Culture and Politics, New York University.
Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, and translator. He was born in Baghdad and studied English literature at Baghdad University before moving to the United States after the 1991 Gulf War. He did his graduate studies at Georgetown, where he earned an MA in Arab Studies, and Harvard where he earned a Ph.D in Arabic Literature in 2006. His poems and essays (in Arabic and English) have appeared in various journals and publications in the Arab world, including as-Safir, an-Nahar, al-Adab, and Masharef, as well as The Nation, Middle East Report, al-Ahram Weekly, Banipal, Ploughshares and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has published a collection of poems, Mawshur Muballal bil-Huroob (A Prism; Wet with Wars, Cairo 2003), which was published in English as Baghdad Blues in April 2007 by Harbor Mountain Press, and a novel I`jaam, which was published in English as I`jam: An Iraqi Rhapsody in March 2007 by City Lights Books. Translations have appeared in Portuguese, German and Norwegian. His poetry was anthologized in Iraqi Poetry Today and Inclined to Speak. A new collection of poetry and his second novel will be published in Beirut in January 2010. He has also contributed numerous translations of Arabic poetry into English and vice versa. His co-translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was nominated for the PEN Prize for translation in 2004 and his translation of Darwish’s last prose book, In the Presence of Absence, is forthcoming from Archipelago in 2010. Antoon returned to his native Baghdad in 2003 as a member of InCounter Productions to co-direct/produce the documentary About Baghdad about the lives of Iraqis in a post-Saddam occupied Iraq. He served as senior editor with the Arab Studies Journal, and currently serves as a member of Pen America, a contributing editor to Banipal and a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report. Antoon is currently an Assistant Professor at New York University and was a 2008-2009 fellow of the EUME program at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
MUSIC
by members of the Cornell Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Ensemble
