Sarah Maguire andSabry Hafez
A State of Siege by Mahoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish is unquestionably one of the greatest poets alive today. Written while the poet himself was under siege in Ramallah during the Israeli invasion of 2002, A State of Siege is a remarkable response to political extremity. This powerful sequence of short lyrics demonstrates Darwish’s remarkable poetic range. As Carolyn Forché has commented, this is a poet who writes with “the lyric intensity of Lorca, the epic breadth of Neruda and the elegiac poignancy of Mandelstam”. Published to huge acclaim throughout the Arab world in 2002, this is the first publication of A State of Siege in its entirety into English.
Darwish was born in Berweh, a village in Palestine, in 1942. After the war of 1948, Berweh was razed by the Israelis and Darwish and his family became refugees in their own country. Having joined the Israeli Communist Party as a youth, Darwish suffered constant harassment by the Israeli authorities, including house arrest and imprisonment, forcing him into exile in 1971. Since his first collection, Olive Leaves, appeared in 1964, Darwish’s extraordinary poetic gifts have been widely acknowledged by the Arab public. Revered as the voice of the Palestinian people, Darwish has published more than twenty books of poetry and numerous prose works. Editor in Chief of the prestigious literary journal, Al-Karmel, Darwish divides his time between Ramallah and Amman. His many awards include the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation.
Darwish was born in Berweh, a village in Palestine, in 1942. After the war of 1948, Berweh was razed by the Israelis and Darwish and his family became refugees in their own country. Having joined the Israeli Communist Party as a youth, Darwish suffered constant harassment by the Israeli authorities, including house arrest and imprisonment, forcing him into exile in 1971. Since his first collection, Olive Leaves, appeared in 1964, Darwish’s extraordinary poetic gifts have been widely acknowledged by the Arab public. Revered as the voice of the Palestinian people, Darwish has published more than twenty books of poetry and numerous prose works. Editor in Chief of the prestigious literary journal, Al-Karmel, Darwish divides his time between Ramallah and Amman. His many awards include the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation.
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