On the UK tour of I Will Not Fold These Maps by Mona Kareem, translated by Sara Elkamel, Sara met with poet and translator Ali Al-Jamri to dig deep into her process rendering Mona’s work into English. They began by comparing their individual translations of the book’s opening poem, “Perdition,” and what followed was an in-depth discussion of Sara’s process and Mona’s themes as they discuss threads of loss, subversion and womanhood in the works. Both translations of “Perdition” appear at the end of this interview. Elkamel’s translation was originally published as part of her translation of Kareem’s I Will Not Fold These Maps, available in the Poetry Translation Centre’s online store and in all good bookshops!
Ali Al-Jamri (AAJ): This first part of the interview is an experiment—but let’s see if it works? I am very interested in hearing you explain your process and the granular decision-making required in translation. By way of starting this conversation, I’ve attempted my own translation of the opening poem هلاك and I’ve shared my draft with you. I find that contrasts often help us define ourselves, and so my hope is that the contrasts between our translations will clarify your process. I’m interested in any reflections you have.
Sara Elkamel (SE): I found it fascinating to go through your (beautiful) translation attempts. Usually, when I reflect on a translation of mine, I experience a sinking feeling associated with the opportunities I missed out on, as well as a sense of (dare I call it) admiration for some of the choices made—as though they were made by someone else. Looking at your translation of “Perdition” has definitely inspired those two reactions within me.
For instance, you and I have translated the third stanza very differently, and that gap helps me think through my choices. What you translated as “Another ship / short of breath / struggles on the ocean’s throat,” I rendered as “Another ship / asphyxiates / the ocean’s larynx.” I realize now that I have entirely omitted the “shortness of breath” that appears in the original. Instead, I leaned on the sound of the word “asphyxiates” to mimic that breathlessness. I’ve always thought the “x” in that word was like a noose placed in its center.
I think you and I also came to different conclusions about the body running out of breath; you interpreted it as the ship, and I as the ocean. In my reading, I felt that this poem had the tendency to give human bodies to natural phenomena; the sky has a breast, the night wears a choker of stars around its neck, and the ocean has a larynx. I realize now that the fourth stanza, “The moon spills a cloud / into the sky’s breast” was a stretch on my part. The original text does not contain the action of “spilling”—but I think I was keen on extending the poem’s tendency to set up an anthropoid actor, an action, and a subject. For better or for worse, I was trying to stay true to the poem’s intentions—or what I perceived to be the poem’s intentions—not necessarily the language itself.
I am also realizing, after reading your translations, that in the fifth stanza, I have forgone the original word “spasms,” instead using “a spasm,” which I figure is because the poem, or my translation of it, was populated by a series of phenomena preceded by an indefinite article; “a small devil,” “a newborn,” “a cloud,” “a choker of stars”—and, in my translation, “a spasm.” I enjoyed the internal list this repeated format was creating within the poem. As I translate, I look for organizing principles, either ones that are preexisting in the original text, or patterns that I could build through my own translation. I firmly believe that there are multiple ways to create meaning, and a syntactic pattern is definitely one of those ways.
I am realizing that translation keeps the original text alive, in the sense that reviewing a translation often forces you to stay in conversation with the original poem. At the risk of sounding too much like Rilke, I think that no translation is final.
AAJ: I am fascinated by your translation of انتحار in the poem’s final stanza as “martyrdom” instead of the dictionary-definition translation: “suicide”. Could you explain your translation process?
SE: It is always so strange when I’m asked to explain my translation process; it’s like I need to recall a past self, and interrogate her, though of course she’s no longer there, so there’s some inferring I must do, based on my hazy knowledge of her. In that last stanza, I think I was uncomfortable with how using “suicide” at the end would mirror the first image of the poem too neatly (“Roses take their own life / from the rails of my bed”). This poem played with forms of life and death so fluidly; we see flowers taking their own life, an ocean asphyxiated, a poem crucified, and night strangled. I think I wanted to offer another form of death, and I thought invoking martyrdom would achieve that. I also must admit that I let sound control my moves sometimes; the consonance in “attempts martyrdom” was too beautiful to pass up.
AAJ: Can you tell me about how you (singular or plural) structured the collection? When I read the penultimate poem, “Lot’s Wife,” it left me with the thought that this entire collection could be called “Self-Portrait as Lot’s Wife”! It’s the moment when she is rendered a poet (“all she wanted was to write a poem about ruins”) that I saw the connection between her and Mona. And the depiction of Lot’s wife’s as “a prisoner of eternity” recalls “Perdition”—the opening poem—the title of which means a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unrepentant person passes after death. It feels to me that these two poems speak with each other and so frame everything between them.
SE: Oh, I love your suggestion for the title; “Self-Portrait at Lot’s Wife.” I can completely imagine Perdition being spoken by Lot’s Wife. The working title for this collection was “Portraits”—because I am convinced that portraiture (of the self, and otherwise) is one of Mona’s main pursuits.
Structuring the collection was a joint effort between its editor, Nashwa Nasreldin, and myself. It was honestly very challenging, particularly because the work here come from three different collections spanning 20 years; Absence with Amputated Fingers (2004), What I Sleep for Today (2016), and The Green and the Arid (unpublished), and the poems appear in different forms and styles. We knew we didn’t want to organize the book chronologically, and these poems don’t necessarily fit neatly into separate thematic units, so a thematic separation was also off the table.
It was Nashwa’s brilliant suggestion that in its first half, the collection would showcase poems that were more somber in tone, and then use the surreal momentum of the poem “Cosmic Hemorrhage” to usher in a second half that is slightly more playful. The collection’s first half serves to showcase Mona’s central themes (selfhood, family dynamics, migration, politics, and death). Nashwa and I were very sure that we wanted “Perdition” as the opener, as we both read it as an ars poetica, and an exemplar of Mona’s skills with figurative language. (We also just love that poem!) The poem “Remains” was also one we both felt should appear near the beginning, as it engages with the speaker’s household and family history.
Both Nashwa and I agreed that “Cosmic Hemorrhage,” a sprawling, poem-in-fragments and one of the oldest in this collection, should appear right down the middle, to work as a transition or hinge between the sections. The poems that follow are not necessarily light-hearted, but they exhibit Mona’s wonderful aptitude for taking a nearly facetious approach to weighty themes. There’s a persona poem where the speaker’s body is the body of a car, and a satirical ode to city life that ends with the lines: “I love the city. / And I really do love modernity– / if only because I can’t stand insects!” The second half is also where Mona’s newer work is placed, including “Lot’s Wife,” which Nashwa brilliantly suggested should appear near the end of the collection, her reasoning being: “Because it’s all built around a story where the protagonist is looking back.”
AAJ: Thinking about “Lot’s Wife” again, I am drawn to this line: “Why wouldn’t the Lord understand that all she wanted was to write a poem about ruins? Is it because men have a sole claim to ruin?” I love this for its richly Arab heritage that could merit a footnote to explain—something which you have, perhaps thankfully, not done. This line explicitly speaks to the male-authored pre-Islamic odes that always opened with a view across ruins; implicitly, it is suggestive of the female poets who were boxed into the genre of eulogy. How have you communicated the referential depths of Mona’s words through your translation?
SE: The beautiful prose poem “Lot’s Wife” imagines the biblical figure (often represented as a pillar of salt) as a bronze statue crafted by a contemporary artist. I am astounded by how Mona managed to represent the pillar of salt as a conceptual artwork, then turn her into a migrant at a border checkpoint, in effect using the figure of Lot’s wife to tackle notions of modernity, empire, and defiance. I am thinking of these stunning lines:
At the border checkpoint, a migrant is not allowed to occupy herself with anything but the present moment. They said that in turning back, she had compromised the identity of the Lord.
The transgression here, of looking back, of holding on to a burning place, is both Lot’s wife’s and the migrant’s. I really admire Mona’s ability to find harmonious, synchronous threads across eras and geographies. The biblical story aside, and even the migrant aside, this is a poem about a woman trapped for eternity (as a pillar of salt turned bronze figurine) because she had the audacity to disobey orders, the audacity to take one final look at her home.
So, I think to communicate the referential depths of Mona’s words, as you put it, I must strike a balance between staying true to the references she’s working with, on the one hand, and the underlying theme on the other. I had to keep reminding myself that this is not a poem about Lot’s wife; this is a prose poem leaning on the Biblical figure to ultimately engage with loss, subversion, and in many ways, womanhood.
AAJ: I’ve brought my personal reading of the collection into our interview as it’s helped me frame my own thoughts and questions, but our conversation reveals how many ways into Mona’s work there are. It leads me to ask, what is your own personal reading of the collection?
SE: I think the title we picked for this collection, I Will Not Fold These Maps, somehow captures how I read it. In my mind, the phrase signals, all at once, stagnation, constant departure, and return. I sincerely admire the fluidity of time and place in Mona’s poetry—her subversion of temporality and geography—and I am so pleased with the ways these gestures are reflected in this book.
AAJ: “The Migrant Poet Slaughters His Voice” closes the collection and unravels threads of translation, politics, and gender. It is sarcastic and biting. Pursuing the idea of “Perdition” and “Lot’s Wife” as framing the collection one more time—why does it end on the poem it does?
SE: There’s been a shift in Mona’s writing in recent years. Where the lyric “I” had been very prominent in her early work, her latest collection-in-progress experiments with a host of speakers and worlds, including Sargon Boulous, Saadi Yousef, and others. In one of our conversations, when I asked Mona about the shift, she said: “I have an impulse to try different things. I just want to write a poem against every conception I had of poetry.”
One of her more recent poems, The Migrant Poet Slaughters His Voice seemed like a natural closure to the collection, perhaps introducing Mona’s new direction. I particularly enjoyed how this piece mirrored “Perdition.” In that opening poem, the speaker seems somewhat dispossessed, helpless in the face of death and destruction. In its last stanza, we see even their tears as they commit suicide. But in “The Migrant…” I find the subject more assured, even in their powerlessness. And of course, I though the following lines were just perfect for a collection’s closure:
hanging—like an eternal cry—
in the chasm of time.
Perdition
by Mona Kareem, translated by Sara Elkamel
Roses jump to their death
from the rails of my bed
as my mother
tries to tuck me into the desert of life
*
In the courtyard of my soul
is a small devil—
a newborn
*
Another ship
asphyxiates
the ocean’s larynx
*
The moon spills a cloud
into the sky’s breast
*
Ideas drown in a spasm
and the poem lays crucified
over the notepad’s knees
*
The night is strangled
by a choker of stars
*
A tear
attempts martyrdom
out of my eye’s abyss
Extinction of the Self
by Mona Kareem, translated by Ali Al-Jamri
Flowers in bloom fling themselves
from the balcony of my bed.
Mother
tries to shove me into life’s desert.
*
In my soul’s plaza,
a small devil
is born.
*
Another ship,
short of breath,
struggles on the ocean’s throat.
*
For the moon: clouds
cover the sky’s breast.
*
Thoughts drown with a spasm.
Crucified on the notebook’s knees:
the poem.
*
The night is choked
by its necklace of stars.
*
A tear
attempts suicide
from the abyss of my eye.
Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist and literary translator. Her debut chapbook, Field of No Justice, was published by the African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books in 2021, and her poems have appeared in international literary journals and anthologies. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University.
Ali Al-Jamri is a poet and translator based in Manchester. He is one of Manchester’s Multilingual City Poets (2022-2024). He edited Between Two Islands (2021) and ArabLit Quarterly: FOLK (2021). His poems, translations and essays have appeared in outlets including Modern Poetry in Translation, ArabLit Quarterly, The Markaz Review, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and Harana, and his work has been featured in the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival and Manchester’s Mother Language Day Festival.
*****
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