AAEF-CAS Postcards from the Underworld
Thursday, April 11, 2024
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Please
join
the
Arab-American
Educational
Foundation
Center
for
Arab
Studies
on
Thursday,
April
11,
2024
for
a
poetry
launch
and
reading
of
Postcards
from
the
Underworld
by
Professor
Sinan
Antoon
(New
York
University).
Date:
Thursday,
April
11,
2024
Time:
Reception:
5:30
pm,
Lecture:
6:00
pm
Location:
Quinn
Hall,
UH
Alumni
Center
Parking:
Paid
parking
is
available
outside
the
Alumni
Center,
on
Cullen
Blvd,
and
Holman
St.
or
or
any
of
the
paid
visitor
parking
locations
on
campus.
To
confront
time,
pre-modern
Arabic
poems
often
began
with
the
poet
standing
before
the
ruins,
real
and
imagined,
of
a
beloved’s
home.
In
Postcards
from
the
Underworld,
Sinan
Antoon
works
in
that
tradition,
observing
the
detritus
of
his
home
city,
Baghdad,
where
he
survived
two
wars—the
Iran-Iraq
War
of
1980
and
the
First
Gulf
War
of
1991—and
which,
after
he
left,
he
watched
from
afar
being
attacked
during
the
US
invasion
in
2003.
Antoon’s
poems
confront
violence
and
force
us
not
to
look
away
as
he
traces
death’s
haunting
presence
in
the
world.
Nature
offers
consolation,
and
flowers
and
butterflies
are
the
poet’s
interlocutors,
but
they
too
cannot
escape
ruin.
Composed in Arabic and translated into English by the poet himself, Postcards from the Underworld is a searing meditation on the destruction of humans, habitats, and homes. Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, scholar, and translator based in New York. He holds degrees from Baghdad, Georgetown, and Harvard where he earned his doctorate in Arabic literature, and is currently an associate professor of Arabic Literature at New York University. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s last prose book, In the Presence of Absence, won the 2012 American Literary Translators’ Award. His translation of his own second novel, The Corpse Washer, won the Banipal-Saif Ghobash Prize for Arabic literary translation in 2015. His most recent work is the novel The Book of Collateral Damage, which was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2016 and published in English translation in 2019.
- Location
- Quinn Hall, UH Alumni Center
- Cost
- Free
- Contact
- Arab-American
Educational
Foundation
Center
for
Arab
Studies
cas@Central.UH.EDU