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Poetry Reading by Gregory Carlock
The Sudden Calamity of Life
To a Syrian Prisoner of Conscience
عند قارعة الحياة

إلى سجين رأي سوري
March 24, 2018 @ Aaliya's Books | Beirut


In 2011, American poet Gregory Carlock travelled to Damascus to research a book he was writing on contemporary Arabic poetry. There, he met Waddah, a young Syrian writer, who introduced him to the city's underground of poets, hash-heads, and political activists. The two began making translations of their poems – from Arabic into English, and from English into Arabic – which they read every week at Bayt al-Qasid, Lukman Derky's ecstatic gatherings in the basement of the Hotel Fardous.

Eighteen months later back in Germany, Carlock learned that Waddah had been kidnapped on a cold December morning by state security forces. For a year afterwards he didn't know whether his friend was still alive. In that period of limbo, Carlock wrote Waddah a letter – a long prose poem, in which he meticulously, and expressively, reconstructed the details of the pair's time together. 

Part travel journal, part elegy for a people, and place, sacrificed on the altar of war, "To a Syrian Prisoner of Conscience" offers readers a glimpse into the tumultuous weeks immediately preceding the Syrian uprising, as well as a sustained meditation on the political limitations of the poetic act. 

The reading was accompanied by an exhibition of ink drawings by Stefan Maneval, which were inspired by the poem. Maneval made the drawings during a postdoctoral fellowship at the Orient-Institut Beirut, between October 2017 and March 2018.

Gregory Carlock is a poet, critic, and scholar of Arabic literature. During the reign of Bush Two, he left New York to study Arabic in Giza. He is the author (with Daniel Lergon) of the collection "Fire Untouched by Smoke" (Ivorypress, Madrid: 2015), and of a polemic against the Syrian-Lebanese poet, Adonis.

Stefan Maneval works as a scholar of the Middle East, photographer, curator, and artist. His publications include articles on contemporary politics, cultural heritage and the art scene in Saudi Arabia, social theory, as well as "Muslim Matter" (Revolver, Berlin: 2016), a co-edited book on the diversity of Muslim everyday life and material culture. He has been illustrating Carlock’s poetry for five years.

With musical accompaniment by Raad al-Shuhuf (oud).

Presented in cooperation with Aaliya's Books, Goethe-Institut Lebanon, and UMAM D&R.
 


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