Kaph Books

Nada Ghosn & Paulina Spiechowicz | Dusk | Kaph Books | 416 pages | 35 EUR

"Dusk" is the poetic title of a book published in Beirut at the end of 2024, which brings together poems by female Lebanese poets from different generations. It was compiled and edited by Nada Ghosn, a Lebanese-French translator and writer, in collaboration with the Polish writer Polina Spiechowicz.

This is a unique initiative, as it is the first time that a book has been published featuring so many female poets. The book contains no fewer than one hundred poems by sixty Lebanese poets, belonging to generations from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Each poem reflects aspects of the history of Lebanon itself - a striking mosaic that conveys to the world the aesthetics of diversity and reflects the rich cultural context that has always characterized Lebanon. The poems in the 416-page anthology are accompanied by artworks and drawings by participating poets such as Etel Adnan, Laure Ghorayeb, Huguette Caland, Afaf Zurayk, Manar Ali Hassan and Jana Eid. The poems and artworks presented in the book reflect the experiences of women living both in Lebanon and the diaspora, whose poetry reflects Lebanon's culture and plurality. The book is published in three languages, Arabic, French and English, meaning that each poem appears three times, translated into two languages. It is almost as if, through translation, a body scattered in all directions is reunited - the same voice in different languages. This initiative by editors Nada Ghosn and Paulina Spiechowhicz, as well as the translation contributed by Nada Ghosn, with Nada Mohammed, Wafaa Tarnowski and Laura Trad, allowed us to discover new talents, new poems and avant-garde styles. It also gives us, the readers, the opportunity to experience the authentic freedom enjoyed by female writers in Lebanon for over a century, defying taboos and traditional artistic forms and frameworks. This is deeply poetic writing, tangibly in living contact with contemporary international literature.

I am thrilled to be able to hold this book in my hands, as this genre has been completely absent in the Lebanese publishing world. The book gives voice to women who are often underrepresented in literary studies or cultural circles, especially since Lebanese women, as mentioned in the book's introduction, were at the heart of the revolutionary movement against corruption in Lebanon in October 2019 and demonstrated a strong political, civic and literary commitment that deserves to be published and acknowledged.

What fascinated me even more was that the book also contains works by women who were born on the eve of the Lebanon war. This is another reason why I have chosen poems by three poets who experienced, and have written about, the war and the post-war period in Lebanon in their own way. The reason I chose them rather than poets from previous generations is perhaps because of my own literary and academic interest in the issues that preoccupied my generation and the generation after the Lebanon War (1975 to 1991), such as violence and its effects on the individual in Lebanon in a divided city like Beirut, and about memory and the importance of creating a common and united space between us Lebanese, as well as the impact of these issues on literature and language.

I have chosen three poets who were born between 1958 and 1977: Darine Houmani, Laila Eid and Susanne Alaywan. The eldest, Leila Eid, was caught up in the civil war as a teenager. I have chosen a poem in three languages for each poet. Arabic, the language in which the poem was written, and then translated into French and English. As always with Literatur.Review, the different language versions can be selected using the language selector at the top right.
All three poets experienced the civil war and its aftermath in different ways: Susanne Alaywan travelled abroad to escape the violence, Laila Eid sought refuge in another area within Lebanon. Darine Houmani, however, emigrated, despite the end of the war, in order to escape its repercussions on society and life in Lebanon. She currently lives in Canada.

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Susanne Alaywan
Lebanese poet and painter born 1974

A Temporary Sun (Fragments)

1. The place leaves us
First the cement squares, followed by the seats.
The sudden void
Demands the furnishing of souls.

2. We should have been sturdier and whiter
As if we were walls forming corners
Supporting the ceiling and the shadows.

Our fingers shouldn’t have trembled
And we should have had
A bit more time.
To give the moment the colors of an image
Other than hatred
Other than our dark clothes.

3. We did not feel the harsh cold
Nor the bats stuck on our wool coats
We moved
Like statues
With hoods of stone from their caves
A disaster that only concerned us.
    
We carried boxes 
And walked dreaming
Of the wood of coffins greening
And becoming trees we could climb. 
With small hearts hidden in our pockets
Just as we hid cigarette boxes from our parents.
With trembling steps
And with exhausted voices
Sore from distance
or from coughing
We moved
From one illusion to another
Like trees kicking our deformities in the dust.
(…)

4. We shall turn our arched backs away
From doors we shut on their disagreements
And move alone towards our differences.
Like trees that have left their forests
We shall cut all roots that tie our hearts to the earth.
As if those inhabiting the screams
Are not our parents,
As if we’re able to grow and laugh
Without them
With a little bit of light. 
(…)

7. I know. This is not my city
For the space is tight
And there are many companions in this faraway land
Who expand the soul
And places.
There’s more loneliness from a corpse
Still unaccustomed to the dark.
Those who have silenced my cry with earth
Have gone back home.
Waiting for him
Is a bed and a woman.
I smoke loss
With two charred lungs, shaking with coughs
Forming clouds to comfort my shadow
Transforming the ceiling into a small sky.

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Leila Eid
Lebanese poet, novelist, story writer, journalist and painter born 1958

I am this sound

Have you heard fifty
Neighing horses
I’m this sound
When I desire you
I’m this hand that untacks your tired saddle
And wipes the sweat of absence
From your brow
I wish I was
The cloud’s dearest friend
A star
Or a hijacker of rays
To snuggle into the secret of sheets
To reach the circle of your eyes

What shall I do with my name?
No one calls me the way you do
I’m the broken atom
Begging to merge with the ether
I want to know the obscure secret of the trajectory of things
Once
To reach you
To shape myself
I bow my mouth onto your eyelashes
And kiss my womanly times lost inside you

I fight the night
The night of the night
The night of the day
And I don’t see the sun
Except where it rises
My abode
Is the dark side of your face
My horses neigh until they cry
Take me to where you are
So I’ll be…
Banks of snow surround me
I am
parched.

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Darine Houmani 
Lebanese poet and journalist living in Canada, born 1977

Write Poetry First

Write poetry first
Before checking your blood pressure
Before supervising your children’s homework
Before starting to think about
Black turbaned heads
Soon civilization will stop
Breathing the winter air
And we will languish senselessly
Inside an electronic world
Divided by a satellite dish
And profound delusions
The internal landscape
Formed by the rough hands of a child 
Standing alone by the water
Surrounded by deep dark heads
Wanting to write poetry first, without thinking
Before taking medicine
Before going out on a stroll with the children
Before taking a photo
Of the black help
Who dreams of having a mobile phone 
And a social media account
I want to sit with you at a table
And love you more
Wishing I had seen your portrait
In an abandoned hotel, twenty years ago
For time has passed like a polaroid photo
No meaning to its wrinkles
Except for the weight of fate
And a vast expanse allowing for numerous landings
And doing everything
Except for writing poetry
I’m this woman
With that inner child
Dreaming of a life way bigger than this one
Now, she only wants to get out of this swamp
Called life
The life she was unable to change
Branching out
Like a mullah’s beard
Where darkness dwells
Not needing extra books
December passes by
But the time is not right
That’s what I feel
A photo of me taken in December 1977
Was enough for me to stare into that time many times
And with immense sadness
And say
Where are you Odette
Truth is too much to bear
I wanted to tell you something about truth
It is grey
And has a frightening beard
Why did you pull me out of my mother’s womb
Was it necessary
There are things one cannot erase
From the bee’s trajectory
I only want respite from the truth
And to breathe in the one I love
In absolute silence
Truth is seeping blackness
Books and newspapers sleep in my bed
And I want you more
To forget the truth
And to write poetry first…

"Dusk" was edited by Nada Ghosn and Paulina Spiechowicz.
Nada Ghosn is a Paris-based writer and poet who has travelled to various Arab countries and lived in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Morocco and has worked in various media and cultural organizations. She has been working as a translator since 2006 and has translated numerous articles, art books, novels, screenplays, plays, short story collections and poems from Arabic into French. She regularly reports for the press on culturally relevant topics and in 2018 founded www.wordworld.online, a platform for translation, writing and editing in Arabic, English and French.
Polina Spiechowicz is an author and art historian from Poland. She studied in Rome, Paris and Berlin. She has published several volumes of poetry and a novel and has written for theater and film.

The Anthology can be ordered here.