Chaos, Crossing

November 15, 2022

French-language poet of the Palestinian diaspora Olivia Elias probes deeply into the upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Chaos, Crossing is a powerful chronicle of uprootedness, of times marked by inequality, injustice, and disconnection. These poems seek the calm at the center of the storm, the still point amidst the chaos.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SARAH MAGUIRE PRIZE FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION

BIOS

Poet of the Palestinian diaspora, born in Haifa in 1944, Olivia Elias writes in French. As a child she lived in Lebanon where her family had taken refuge in 1948. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Montréal, Canada, and later settled in France. Her third poetry collection, Chaos, Traversée appeared in 2019. Characterized by terse, laconic language and strong rhythms, her poetry shows a deep sensitivity to the Palestinian cause, the plight of refugees and human suffering in general. Chaos, Crossing—an extended version of the French book translated by Kareem James Abu Zeid—marks her debut in English translation. Published by World Poetry in 2022, it was shortlisted for the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation. Your Name, Palestine, a long poem translated into English by Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert, was published in a special-edition chapbook by World Poetry in 2023. Her work has also been translated into Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese, and has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a translator of writers from across the Arab world, including Najwan Darwish (Palestine), Adonis (Syria), Rabee Jaber (Lebanon), and Dunya Mikhail (Iraq). He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship for translation, PEN Center USA’s Translation Award, a Fulbright Fellowship (Germany), the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, a CASA Fellowship (Egypt), and has been a finalist for PEN America's Translation Prize, once in poetry and once in prose. He is also the author of The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice (Lockwood Press).

Born in 1978, Najwan Darwish is one of the foremost contemporary Arab poets. Since the publication of his first collection in 2000, his poetry has been hailed across the Arab world and beyond as a singular expression of the Palestinian struggle. He has published eight books in Arabic, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. NYRB Poets published Darwish’s Nothing More to Lose in 2014, and Exhausted on the Cross in 2021. His most recent book in English translation is No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems 2014–2024 (Yale Margellos). Darwish lives between Haifa and his birthplace, Jerusalem.