#middle eastern poetry

[bones-ivy-breath]

Kinder Than Miriam by Kajal Ahmad (tr. Choman Hardi)

#kinder than miriam #kajal ahmad #quote #typography #literature #dark academia #aesthetic #dead academia #dark things #wound #poetry #iraqi literature #middle eastern literature #middle eastern poetry #choman hardi

[yaras-worldofchaos]

why is everyone sleeping on middle eastern poetry

“i hadn’t told them about you,

but they saw you bathing in my eyes.

i hadn’t told them about you,

but they saw you in my written words.

the perfume of love cannot be concealed.”

- Nizar Qabbani

“i have given you the

opportunity to

choose so choose

whether to die on

my chest or on the

pages of my poetry.”

- Nizar Qabbani

#poetry #poems #poems and poetry #sad poem #poem #middle east #middle eastern poetry #nizar qabbani

[solvaaya]

Oklahoma by Hala Alyan. Text ID under cut.

[Text ID: For a place I hate, I invoke you often. Stockholm’s: I am eight years old and the telephone poles are down, the power plant at the edge of town spitting electricity. Before the pickup trucks, the strip malls, dirt beaten by Cherokee feet. Osiyo, tsilugi. Rope swung from mule to tent to man, tornadoes came, the wind rearranged the face of the land like a chessboard. This was before the gold rush, the greed of engines, before white men pressing against brown women, nailing crosses by the river, before the slow songs of cotton plantations, the hymns toward God, the murdered dangling like earrings. Under a redwood, two men signed away the land and in history class I don’t understand why a boy whispers sand monkey. The Mexican girls let me sit with them as long as I braid their hair, my fingers dipping into that wet black silk. I try to imitate them at home — mírame, mama — but my mother yells at me, says they didn’t come here so I could speak some beggar language. Heaven is a long weekend. Heaven is a tornado siren canceling school. Heaven is pressed in a pleather booth at the Olive Garden, sipping Pepsi between my gapped teeth, listening to my father mispronounce his meal.]

#literature #poetry #poems #quotes #desi poetry #desi poets #indian poets #indian poetry #middle eastern poetry #palestinian poetry #palestinian poet #hala alyan

[its-a-gold-song]

reading rumi

this man has no right to make me feel these things with just a bunch of words

A Dumb Experiment

Break open your personal self

to taste the story of the nutmeat soul.

These voices come from that

rattling against the outer shell.

The nut and the oil inside

have voices that can only be heard

with another kind of listening.

If it weren’t for the sweetness of the nut,

the inner talking, who would ever shake a walnut?

We listen to words

so we can silently

reach into the other.

Let the ear and mouth get quiet,

so this taste can come to the lip.

Too long we’ve been saying poetry,

talking discourses, explaining the mystery

outloud. Let’s try a dumb experiment.

Father Reason

The universe is a form of divine law,

your reasonable father.

When you feel ungrateful to him,

the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.

Make peace with that father, the elegant patterning,

and every experience will fill with immediacy.

Because I love this, I am never bored.

Beauty constantly wells up, a noise of springwater

in my ear and in my inner being.

Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms

of those who have submitted to the mystical life.

Leaf sounds talk together like poets making fresh metaphors. The green felt cover slips,

and we get a flash of the mirror underneath.

Think of how it will be when the whole thing

is pulled away! I tell only one one-thousanth

of what I see, because there’s so much doubt everywhere.

The conventional opinion of this poetry is,

it shows great optimism for the future.

But Father Reason says,

No need to announce the future!

This now is it. This. Your deepest need and desire

is satisfied by the moment’s energy

here in your hand.

#poetry #rumi #rumi poetry #father reason #a dumb experiment #middle eastern global studies goes hard #can't i just rest #why does my soul have to be torn apart like this #writing #middle eastern authors #middle eastern poetry #goldsong vomits

[omengod]

#middle east #middle eastern poetry #arabic poems

[thelileefiles]

“In the summer

I stretch out on the shore

And think of you. Had I told the sea

What I felt for you,

It would have left its shores,

Its shells,

Its fish,

And followed me.”

Nizar Qabbani 💌

#portra 160 #kodak portra 160 #film photography #analog photography #beach #sunset #canon ae1 #analog #beautiful #photography #poetry #middle eastern poetry

[yashriff]

#khalil gibran #poetry #middle eastern poetry #washington dc #bookstore

[menalez]

also racist white people

#it’s so annoying lol literally we have such a massive collection of homoerotic poetry loool but apparently homosexuality is ‘western #culture’ & if ur gay + middle eastern then ur somehow an oxymoron

[cupids-psyche]

I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you bathing in my eyes.

I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you in my written words

The perfume of love can not be concealed

-Nizar Qabbani

#poetry #arabic poem #eyes #academia aesthetic #middle eastern #nizar qabbani #mahmoud darwish

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

The situation in Lebanon today is bleak. Carved out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire and subjected to years of colonialism-lite administration by France, its economy and infrastructure have been devastated by a long civil war, overlapping occupations by Syria and Israel, and corruption on a massive scale. Since 2019, Lebanon has been in the midst of a severe financial crisis, with widespread unemployment and hyperinflation. Now 80% of the population is poor and Lebanon is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

And yet, JD Harlock, Poetry Editor at Solarpunk Magazine, who lives in Beirut, believes in solarpunk. Join us for this episode to find out how that can be and what day to day life is like in Beirut right now.

You can find JD on X and Instagram at @JD_Harlock.

#solarpunk #Solarpunk Presents Podcast #Beirut #Lebanon #Beirut explosion #Beirut Lebanon #hopepunk #hope despite political disaster #podcast #interview #interview podcast #Ottoman Empire #economics #history #Middle Eastern history #colonialism #poetry #solarpunk magazine #solarpunk poetry #poetry editor #Lebanese civil war #civil war #French colonialism #infrastructure #financial crisis #Lebanon financial crisis #Lebanese financial crisis #Syria #Israel #unemployment

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Iman Mersal

Iman Mersal was born in 1966 in Mit 'Adlan, Egypt. Mersal has written five books of poetry and a book of essays. Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, German, Hebrew, Dutch, and English. Mersal's creative nonfiction book Traces of Enayat al-Zayyat won the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in Literature, and her book The Threshold was shortlisted for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize.

#poets #poetry #writers #woman writers #arabic poetry #arab #egypt #egyptian #middle east #middle eastern writers #Youtube

[bones-ivy-breath]

Is the wound in my heart deeper than hers?

Kinder Than Miriam by Kajal Ahmad (tr. Choman Hardi)

#kinder than miriam #quote #literature #poetry #kajal ahmad #aesthetic #dark academia #dead academia #choman hardi #dark things #wound #the heart #bodymind #middle eastern poetry #love

[aphroditeaintshit]

You could stab me in the chest and I'll still apologise for getting blood on your clothes.

#dark romantica #romantic academia #love #dark academia #quotes #persian #words #hopelessly in love #middle eastern #poetry #mahmoud darwish #rumi #poets and writers #arabian

[solvaaya]

After Iraq Sweidan by Hala Alyan. Text ID under cut.

[Text ID: Today I cut calories but at night I eat worms. I won’t say what I paid for this mattress. You can’t put a price on good sleep. You can’t put a corpse back together. One bomb dives into the sky like a rose. If I don’t say rose, you’ll skip ahead to the end. I think I’m in love with the murdered poet.]

#literature #poetry #poems #quotes #desi poetry #desi poets #indian poets #indian poetry #middle eastern poetry #palestinian poetry #palestinian poet #hala alyan

[dandyliooon]

Majnun

They tell me "Crush the desire for Layla in your heart!" But I implore thee, oh my God, Let it grow even stronger. Take what is left of my life and add it to Layla's. Let me never demand from her as much as a single hair, even if my pain reduces me to the width of one! Let her punish and castigate me: her wine alone shall fill my cup, and my name shall never appear without her seal. My life shall be sacrificed for her beauty, my blood shall be spilled freely for her, even though I bum for her painfully, like a candle, none of my days shall ever be free of this pain. Let me love, oh my God, Love for love's sake, and make my love a hundred times as great as it was and is!

-- Nizami Ganjavi --

An excerpt from the epic poem written about the love story of Layla and Majnun [Majnun: crazy; he was literally crazy in love with Layla]

#poem #epic poem #love poem #crazy in love #romantic poem #arabian poem #middle eastern poem #poetry #majnun #Layla and Majnun

[fragmentsofgrief]

today's aesthetic moodboard

#moodboard #arab aesthetics #middle east #middle eastern aesthetic #arab poetry #Cairo #Jordon #arab #Beirut #Arab literature #arab music #middle eastern #aesthetic moodboard #vintage arab #vintage middle east #arab fashion #arab textile #arab literature