Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me: Poetry by Palestinian Poet Ghassan Zaqtan

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

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Renowned Palestian poet Ghassan Zaqtan and translator Fady Joudah visit UCLA for a poetry reading on October 25th, 2012.

Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan is the author of 10 collections of poetry. He is also a novelist, editor and filmmaker. He was born in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, and has lived in Jordan, Beirut, Damascus and Tunis. He returned to Palestine in the early 1990s and now lives in Ramallah. "Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me" is his ninth collection of poetry. He is one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. His poems in this stirring collection invite us to explore them, exit them, map and un-map them, fill them up and empty them, with the living and non-living, the animate and inanimate, towards a true freedom.

Fady Joudah is a practicing physician of internal medicine and an award-winning poet and translator. Among his translations are two poetry collections by Mahmoud Darwish, "If I Were Another" and "The Butterfly's Burden." He lives in Houston, Texas.

Duration: 37:42