So What
New and Selected Poems 1971-2005
Published on 15. November 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-85224-792-8 (ISBN)
Description
Taha Muhammad Ali (1931-2011) was a much celebrated Palestinian poet whose work is driven by a storyteller's vivid imagination, disarming humour and unflinching honesty. Born in rural Galilee, Muhammad Ali was left without a home when his village was destroyed during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Out of this history of shared loss and survival, he created art of the first order. His poems portray experiences ranging from catastrophe to splendour, all the while preserving an essential human dignity. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.
More details
Edition
International
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
325 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-792-8 (9781852247928)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Taha Muhammad Ali was born in 1931 in the village of Saffuriyya, Galilee. At 17 he fled to Lebanon with his family after the village came under heavy bombardment during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. A year later they slipped back across the border and settled in Nazareth, where he lived until his death in 2011. An autodidact, he owned a souvenir shop now run by his sons near Nazareth's Church of the Annunciation. In Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Europe and in America, audiences were powerfully moved by Taha Muhammad Ali's poems of political complexity and humanity. He published several collections of poetry and one volume of short stories. His edition So What: New & Selected Poems 1971-2005 (Bloodaxe Books, 2007) was a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Adina Hoffman's acclaimed biography of Taha Muhammad Ali, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century (Yale University Press, 2009), won the 2010 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.