Fox on a Boat

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Moubarak Ouassat, Mahmoud Darwish Arabic Poetry in Translation Marrakesh If you are a new reader on my blog, you may not know that I love Arabic, and am currently learning the language. The above picture was taken in Morocco, when I travelled there two weeks ago with two friends. It made sense for me to continue on the Arabic theme and share some Arabic poetry today. Moubarak Ouassat The first poem I am linking to is   Perplexité . The poem is available in Arabic, with a translation in French (translated by the poet), but an English one does not seem to be available. Here is a quote from the poem: Et de quoi peut rêver  Un oiseau Que peut l’arbre Après que la pluie Ait été reportée Now, here is my (rough!) translation for you non-French speakers: And of what can dream A bird What can do the tree After the rain Has been delayed It's a pretty rough translation - the first line is not great, grammatically, but I w...

As you may know, today is/was World Poetry Day . Around these parts, it's coming to a close, but it's not quite over yet! I've been trying to post to FB and tweet  quite regularly all day, so this post will be like a round up of poetic goodness. You may also know that I am very interested in languages and translation, so I've tried to share as many translated poems as I share English ones. (You may also know that I am attempting to self teach a few languages, but I'll talk about that in more detail a little later). I tried to make today into a little project, and though I didn't do as much as I would've liked, I'm quite happy with what I did. My idea was to bring art and poetry together with loose illustrations based on the poems I'd share. I was going to paint abstract paintings but it didn't quite work out that way. Well, enough talk! I present to you now the three poems I used as artistic inspiration: #1 - "The Wandering Guitar ...