AAEF-CAS Postcards from the Underworld
Please
join
the
Arab-American
Educational
Foundation
Center
for
Arab
Studies
on
Thursday,
April
11,
2024
for
a
poetry
launch
and
reading
of
Postcards
from
the
Underworld
by
Professor
Sinan
Antoon
(New
York
University).
Date:
Thursday,
April
11,
2024
Time:
Reception:
5:30
pm,
Lecture:
6:00
pm
Location:
Quinn
Hall,
UH
Alumni
Center
Parking:
Paid
parking
is
available
outside
the
Alumni
Center,
on
Cullen
Blvd,
and
Holman
St.
or
or
any
of
the
paid
visitor
parking
locations
on
campus.
To
confront
time,
pre-modern
Arabic
poems
often
began
with
the
poet
standing
before
the
ruins,
real
and
imagined,
of
a
beloved’s
home.
In
Postcards
from
the
Underworld,
Sinan
Antoon
works
in
that
tradition,
observing
the
detritus
of
his
home
city,
Baghdad,
where
he
survived
two
wars—the
Iran-Iraq
War
of
1980
and
the
First
Gulf
War
of
1991—and
which,
after
he
left,
he
watched
from
afar
being
attacked
during
the
US
invasion
in
2003.
Antoon’s
poems
confront
violence
and
force
us
not
to
look
away
as
he
traces
death’s
haunting
presence
in
the
world.
Nature
offers
consolation,
and
flowers
and
butterflies
are
the
poet’s
interlocutors,
but
they
too
cannot
escape
ruin.
Composed
in
Arabic
and
translated
into
English
by
the
poet
himself,
Postcards
from
the
Underworld
is
a
searing
meditation
on
the
destruction
of
humans,
habitats,
and
homes.
Sinan
Antoon
is
a
poet,
novelist,
scholar,
and
translator
based
in
New
York.
He
holds
degrees
from
Baghdad,
Georgetown,
and
Harvard
where
he
earned
his
doctorate
in
Arabic
literature,
and
is
currently
an
associate
professor
of
Arabic
Literature
at
New
York
University.
His
translation
of
Mahmoud
Darwish’s
last
prose
book,
In
the
Presence
of
Absence,
won
the
2012
American
Literary
Translators’
Award.
His
translation
of
his
own
second
novel,
The
Corpse
Washer,
won
the
Banipal-Saif
Ghobash
Prize
for
Arabic
literary
translation
in
2015.
His
most
recent
work
is
the
novel
The
Book
of
Collateral
Damage,
which
was
longlisted
for
the
International
Prize
for
Arabic
Fiction
2016
and
published
in
English
translation
in
2019.
