

Pierre Joris recommended I look through it when I asked him where I might find francophone poetry to translate, and when I read the poems of Khaïr-Eddine’s in there, I felt an unmistakable urgency, a fierce need not just to get out whatever was inside the mind behind these poems but to communicate with someone. Khalid Lyamlahy (KL): What was your first exposure to Khaïr-Eddine’s work and why did you decide to translate it?Ĭonor Bracken (CB): I first encountered Khaïr-Eddine’s work in 2015, in Poems for the New Millenium IV: The University of California Book of North African Literature (2013). It also addresses their most recent and future translation projects. The following interview explores their relationship with Khaïr-Eddine’s work and illuminates the context, process, and challenges of their translations. The latter co-translated with Pierre Joris Khaïr-Eddine’s masterpiece Agadir (Lavender Ink / Diálogos, 2020) and translated three of his other works: I, Caustic (Litmus Press, 2022), Resurrection of Wild Flowers (OOMPH! Press, 2022) and Proximal Morocco - (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023 ). The former translated Khaïr-Eddine’s first poetry collection Scorpionic Sun (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2019). The recent (and long-awaited) surge of interest in Khaïr-Eddine’s oeuvre is due in large part to the work of dedicated and passionate translators, including Conor Bracken and Jake Syersak. Most of his works, published with Editions du Seuil in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, have long been out of print. Some major features of Khaïr-Eddine’s unruly prose and poetry are generic hybridity, acerbic political critique, anti-authoritarian spirit, and the celebration of his native Amazigh (or Berber) land and culture. His practice of what he called “linguistic guerrilla warfare” is based on the distortion of French language and the use of unconventional and subversive imagery. One of the cofounders of Souffles/Anfas, the influential journal of culture and politics established in 1966, Khaïr-Eddine played a major role in the renewal of Moroccan and North African literature. In recent years, the work of Moroccan poet and writer Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine (1941–1995) has received increasing attention, both in Morocco and abroad. An Interview with Susanne Bergström Larsson from the Swedish Arts Council.An Interview with Wenona Byrne from Creative Australia.

An Interview with Shun Inoue from the Japan Foundation.An Interview with Marieke Roels from Flanders Literature.Translated from the Indonesian by Toni Pollard Translated from the Indonesian by Jessica Jemalem Ginting Andina Dwifatma, from Quieter Than a Whisper.Translated from the Indonesian by Dalih Sembiring Raudal Tanjung Banua, Ben Anderson’s Final Message to a Street Musician in Jogja.Translated from the Indonesian by John H. Translated from the Javanese by George Quinn Translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo Anna Seghers, The Dead Girls’ Class Trip.Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches Translated from the Middle English by Simon Armitage Translated from the Chinese by brenda Lin Translated from the Ukrainian by Patricia Dubrava Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella Translated from the Portuguese by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren Amyr Klink, from One Hundred Days Between Sky and Sea.Translated from the Romanian by Amanda L. Translated from the French by Ray Ellenwood and Adam Seelig Claude Gauvreau, from The Vampire and the Nymphomaniac.Translated from the German by Sharon Howe Translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman Kirsten Hammann, from The Georg Complex.Translated from the Korean by Yoojung Chun Translated from the Italian by Antonella Lettieri Enrico Remmert, from The War of the Murazzi.Translated from the Spanish by Victor Meadowcroft

Translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman
