#al-saddiq al-raddi

[bones-ivy-breath]

Music is playing the chessboard with no table and still it kills. The boys on the wall of the girls’ school have been here before. As if I’m smoke toying with a knife, as if I’m a finger not sewing a fleeting song.

They always kill me by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

[poems-from-around-the-world]

Garden Statues - Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi - Sudan

Translator: Unknown (Arabic)

The last night . . . the first night . . . . . . between them – clarity . . . . . . . .

You left that glass of memory to memory – let its essence transmute all these nights into gold

You left the voice of Ali Farka Toure soaring through the silvered light of a room, a room inlaid with the jewels of minutes and hours

You left your hands lost in the familiar characters of a vanishing keyboard

You left a wooden rocking-horse an old teddy-bear propped on a chair the neighbouring gardens

You left the sun still toying with the sky at eight in the evening

You left a window open on a morning arrayed with morning

You left a flower labouring towards morning

You deliberately left that peacock arrested in the field of beauty

. . . . . . . . .

Whatever time is left of that night will never return . . . These jewels will never return A sail will never quench its thirst for the horizon

And when you left you were cast in the bronze of that experience you were consumed and yet complete you were fashioned from mother-of-pearl you were made of unadorned clay

Weekdays returned, empty handed Routine returned

And silence reigned

[soracities]

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, from "Theatre" (trans. Sarah Maguire & Sabry Hafez) [ID'd]

[billherbert23]

Mini-Reviews (6): A Friend’s Kitchen

A Friend’s Kitchen, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, translated by Bryar Bajalan and Shook (Poetry Translation Centre), £9 I remember touring with Saddiq when both Gaarriye and Sarah Maguire were still alive (I was reading with Gaarriye as one of his co-translators), so reading this lovely collection with its distinctly elegiac overtones was a moving experience. The link with Gaarriye was for me reinforced…

[arablit]

From Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi’s 'A Friend's Kitchen'

Next month, Poetry Translation Centre is releasing a collection of poetry by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, A Friend’s Kitchen, translated by Bryar Bajalan and Shook. To mark the occasion, they have shared an excerpt from the introduction and two poems from the collection. An excerpt from the introduction to A Friend’s Kitchen By Bryar Bajalan In his poem ‘The Book of Sorrows’, Al-Saddiq illustrates the…

[fallingsatellive]

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer / omtai on Tumblr / "Everything" (2017) / Evaporator by Frost* / On the Nature of Consciousness, Alan Watts / Sara Teasdale / Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi / genesisfawn on Tumblr / Everyone Is Everyone (And Everything Is Everything) by Au4 / exitwound on Tumblr / Welcome to Night Vale ep. 132

[lestempsdereveur]

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, A Body

[forsoothsayer]

In The Company Of Michelangelo by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

1 The kings who have gone left us the relics of their forgettable names – like Aleece or Kush They left us their peculiar crowns shards of skeletons fish-heads unpronounceable words kohl-sticks commandments and eulogies graven in stone Yet you are            lit up beside me            wherever your throne sets down Live blood in dead veins – you truly are unforgettable 2 You accompany me to the gates of ancient Rome reaching the ends of perfection as you envisage grace threading each tender aperture as you envisage the faultless line and the perfect circle Let us be brothers in stone hand in hand fingers entwined – and then, on the threshold of a bar we clink our glasses as you add the last touch to a face already dreaming its history 3 Which of us is the key? Your door or mine? 4 Silence is bliss Life is bliss Creation is bliss            Even though his chair is empty            even though he is gone            darkness is alight with the presence of his embrace 5 What is the key? London, 30 March 2006

[fuckindiva]

“I let alphabets cling to me as I climb the thread of language between myself and the world. I muster crowds in my mouth: suspended between language and the world, between the world and the alphabets.

I let my head listen to the myth, to all sides praising each other. And I shout at the winds from the top of a mountain.

Why does my tongue tell me to climb this far? What is the distance between my voice and my longing? What is there?

A body transcending my body. A body exiled by desire. A body sheltered by the wind.”

Al-Saddiq al-Raddi, A Body

[libraryofvenus]

Nothing - Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (tr. Sarah Maguire & Atef Alshaer)

Before you start reading, put down your pen: consider the ink, how it comprehends bleeding Learn from the distant horizon and from the narrowing eyes the expansiveness of vision and the treachery of hands Do not blame me – do not blame anyone – if you die before you read on before blood is understood

[finita-la-commedia]

How beautifully you offered me the moon, as I caressed away your tears, and you, alight with love, thrust at my vitals with a kitchen knife. Was I here       or there ? How one we were !

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, “Close up”

[finita--la--commedia]

Suddenly - a small fox, playful, floods your wounded heart with joy He searches your face with his singular gaze, knows you're at one with his vagabond stance                                                                                                                           That very night I longed for you, I missed your exquisite arousal, I yearned for the moon that knew our names ...

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (born 1969), from “Small Fox” (2006), translated from the Arabic by Sarah Maguire

[viperslang]

You are one of my favorite people and poets in the world. Do you have any advice for new writers?

Thank you. I appreciate the confidence you have in my advice coz I mostly feel a little awry about giving advice when it comes to writing.

A few things I would tell my younger self are –

Invest time in building community. 

Impostor Syndrome is internalized oppression and utterly bollocks.

Engage with other people in arts, not only writers. 

Workshops ≠ echo chambers.Read more critical theory, anthropology, cultural critiques. 

Remember Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi : “Write / certain of what electrifies the body /sure of how to rig the scene

& keep at it. It is worth the agony and the ecstasy. :)

[soracities]

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, from "Lamps" (trans. Sarah Maguire & Sabry Hafez), My Voice: A Decade of Poems from the Poetry Translation Centre (ed. Sarah Maguire) [ID'd]

[liarsdagger]

A Body, Al-Saddiq al-Raddi

[arablit]

Translated Work By Iman Mersal, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi Make ALTA Longlists

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024 — A work translated from Arabic made both of the twelve-book longlists announced today by the American Literary Translators Association for the 2024 National Translation Awards: in prose and poetry. The book that made the prose longlist — which was judged by Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi — was Iman Mersal’s Traces of…