من سبعة طيور

Mohammed Bennis is a Moroccan poet, among the most important voices in Arab literature. He was born in 1948 in Fez, Morocco. He is also the translator into Arabic of Stéphane Mallarmé, Georges Bataille, and Bernard Noël. In 1974, he founded the magazine Al Thaqâfa Al Jadida ("The New Culture"), which played an active role in the cultural life of Morocco until it was closed down in 1984. In 1985, together with university professors and writers, he established the publishing house Dar Toubkal. He was the driving force behind the funding of The House of Poetry in Morocco in 1996 and was its president from 1996 to 2003. He has published fourteen poetry collections and more than 30 titles of poetry, prose, essays, and translations. He has received several awards in Europe and the Middle East. His poetry has been translated into numerous languages, including French, German, Spanish, English, Swedish, Italian, Turkish, and Japanese.

Nashwa Gowanlock is an Editor-at-large at Asymptote. She is an Egyptian poet, translator and journalist currently working towards an MFA in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her translations of the poems by Moroccan poet, Mohammed Bennis, were produced as part of her graduate thesis. The selected poems are from one of Bennis's most recent collections, Seven Birds.