Jerusalem-forum@wanadoo.jo

Nathalie Handal

Palestinian Poets

Nathalie Handal has lived in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, and has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Poet, writer, playwright, editor and literary researcher, her work has appeared in numerous magazines/literary journals worldwide, and she is a frequent contributor to Al Shuara and Al Karmel. Handal has also interviewed numerous writers including Allen Ginsberg, Charles Simic and Mahmoud Darwish. She has read/performed poetry and given talks on Arab-American and Ethnic-American literature and theatre in the United States, Europe, and the Arab world. She is the author of the poetry book, The Never Field, the poetry CD, Traveling Rooms, and the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, an Academy of American Poets bestseller. Handal is presently editing two anthologies, Arab-American Literature and Dominican Literature and co-editing along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, Risen from East: An Anthology of South Asian, East Asian and Middle Eastern Poets. She is finishing a play, The Raining Room and her poetry book, Strangers Inside Me, is forthcoming.

Ephratha

There you stand
between the dream of two gazelles,
breathlessly
questioning the poem
Poem
dressed in olive branches and cracked happiness,
surrounded by seasons of sleepless nights staring
at the dusty walls of cities we have lost
Poem
that loses its address or that the address