The poet Krasia Al-Awad (24)
Wednesday 1 March 2023 / 19:19
The Syrian poet “Krasia Al-Awad” has been living for more than two decades in the Argentine city of Santiago del Estero. She published her only book in Spanish in 2008. She works in audiovisual journalism. Recently, she began her career in literary translation through cooperation with the UAE’s Dar Al-Muhit, and the “Adab Book” house. Saudi Arabia, and its texts were used in a play that won several Argentine awards, and about its translations, this dialogue took place with it:
Navigating through poetry
Is it because you are a poet that your first book was “Tango and Silver of Kalam”, translated into Arabic and published in the Emirates, or are there other reasons?
I am afraid of the word poetess, because it is a heavy crown on the head. Most likely, I am a woman who loves poetry, even if I write it. The idea of poetic selections came from the suggestion of the editor-in-chief of the publishing house, representing, of course, the house’s desire to sail to the country of silver and tango through poetry.
What criteria did you make sure to be available in the book “Tango and Silver of Speech”?
In it, I tried, as much time and circumstance as possible, to present a bouquet of poetic voices that represent an aspect of the Argentine poetic movement today, in which I relied on objective taste as much as possible, as encompassing the entire poetic landscape is something that requires time and perhaps several books in its presentation, so I shed light on a general historical ground. It deals with an important part of the history of Argentine poetry as a kind of completion process for what no single work can comprehend, and for the texts that I chose and translated with the least possible betrayals and with the most honesty and faithfulness to the word of the poem and the feeling of its poet, because the adventure does not lie in translation itself as a formulation process, or a reformulation of the text. The poetic as much as it is in that intuitive challenge to enter the secret worlds of the poetic text wearing the skin of the poet.
Fenced by surprise
Can we make this anthology a complete picture of Argentine poetry, and how many poets are in this anthology?
Not at all, it does not shorten Argentine poetry, nor the poets of this warm spot of land surrounded by amazement as if its rivers spring from paradise. It gives an identity to poetry and robs it of another, giving it a soul and hiding another, while poetry remains poetry with its genes, its essence, and its jewels, from which I chose on this occasion a bouquet belonging to fifty female poets and poets who gave birth to their poems in the period between the years 2000 and 2022, despite the diversity of their ages and their contemporaneous circumstances. Divergent from the autobiography of Argentina full of voices and cries, with deaths and resurrections, imbued with that Latin passion for joy and football as well as for tango, samba and ballads.
What is the distinguishing mark formed by “Borges” in the course of Argentine poetry?
Borges devised a pioneering style of his own through which he provided pioneering opportunities for young poets in Argentina. Consequently, the dominant rhetorical discourse character at that time was manifested in metaphor and the ability to create an identity in the sense that the poet could create a linguistic sign whose meanings define the power of the Creator through the metaphor indicating the poet’s vital experience. The goal of the movement that he led was to highlight the need for creativity outside the boundaries of traditional poetry, but what is surprising is that Borges, after turning to the novel, rejected the principle of metaphor, distancing himself from his youthful poetic struggle.
Who are the most prominent Argentine poets, and what distinguishes her poetry or experience?
Argentina gave birth to great poets such as Susana Theon and Olga Orosco, but the experiences of the two poets, Alfonsina Storni, whose experience was characterized by female subjectivity and modernity, and Alejandra Bitharnik, who overwhelmed melancholy, fear and isolation over her poetry, as if death was her first inspiration until she surrendered to him, when she committed suicide at the thirty-sixth of Her age, are the most prominent in the Argentine and perhaps Latin poetic scene.
The heiress of Shahrazad
Is there a spot of light on your second book, Stories by Marcella Serrano, published in Saudi Arabia?
The writer’s style tends towards simplicity, but it is the clever simplicity that relies on the reader’s culture, knowledge, and high sensitivity to dive into the psychological depths of human issues, such as the issue of women, as is the case in this group, which consists of twenty different narratives about events, with women from anywhere in the world starring in them. They resist time, aging, deprivation of love, loneliness, politics, discrimination, society and memories. Stories that represent or reflect what thousands of women experience every day as they try to fill the gaps in their lives, fall in love, believe, suffer, make mistakes and pay heavy prices, and other stories that deserve to be told. Writer Carlos Fuentes states that Marcela Serrano “is the heiress of Scheherazade… Thanks to writers like Marcela, life will never say its last word.”
