The Making of a Poet: Mohsen Mohamed & Sherine Elbanhawy residency, 23 – 27 Oct. 2023

The Making of a Poet is a Trent Grant and Laertes Press sponsored residency for Mohsen Mohamed and Sherine Elbanhawy. In 2021, Mohsen published his first book of poetry, مفيش رقم بيرد (Mafīsh raqam bīrudd) which won first prize for vernacular poetry at the Cairo International Book Fair as well as the Sawiris Cultural Award. He wrote the poems while incarcerated in several prisons between 2014-2019 as he notes, “poetry in prison is like dreaming; it’s an alternative space to live, experience, and see the world.” Written in Egyptian Arabic, his poetry oscillates between longing and loss, between the present and the past, and between optimism and despair.

Mohsen will be joined by Sherine who was inspired to translate Mohsen’s work after a chance meeting at a workshop. She read his poetry and noted that “[his] poetry is very much ingrained in the tradition of poetry as a voice of resistance.” Sherine’s translation was published earlier this year by Laertes Press, an independent press committed to literary translation based in Chapel Hill and is entitled No One is On the Line.

The Bedfellows Are Sleeping and I’m Whispering

Oh, what a story,
the story
of my oppression

الرفاق نايمين و أنا بهمس

يا حكاية ظلمي يا حكاية

Mohsen was born in Mansoura, a city in Egypt located along the Nile, and had been pursuing a degree in Business Administration. However, he was wrongly arrested in 2014 and spent 5 years incarcerated in 6 different jails. He currently lives in Oxford, England. Last year he was interviewed about his poetry and his time in prison (in Arabic). Some of the poems in No One is On the Line, as well as new poems by Mohsen will be published later this year in a new collection of Egyptian prison writings in the post-2011 period by the University of California press.

In the deafening
silence of the nights
in the colossal
isolating barrier,
I grappled with question and answer,
like a mute who strives
to interrogate someone sightless

في الليالي وصمتها القاتل
والجدار العازل الحائل
كنت أجاوب فيها و أتسائل
زي أخرس يسأل الأعمي
حطوا ليه على عينه غماية

Sherine Elbanhawy, is currently pursuing a MA in Islamic Studies-Women and Gender Studies at McGill University. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She’s the founder of Rowayat, a literary magazine showcasing Egyptian and Arab/SWANA writers.

Fawzi

Running and fleeing at a protest
in a snapshot caught by a friend,
a taste of teargas,
and people making way for you
to revive a friend
suddenly passed out.
On the left side
of the photo
betrayers and decent people.
In the back,
a throng, seen and unseen.

فوزي

وكر وفر في مظاهرة
و صورة لقطها ليك صاحبك
بطعم الغاز
وناس توسع لك طريق
علشان تداوي رفيق
أغمى عليه فجأة
وناس في شمال الصورة كات خاينة
وناس صادقة
وناس في الخلف مش باينة
وناس في الخلف

Over the course of the 23-27 Oct. week, Mohsen and Sherine will participate in a number of events and we hope you’ll attend!

On Tuesday, we’ll visit with Dr. Claudia Yaghoobi of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a reading and discussion with her students in her course entitled Iranian Prison Literature.

The next day, Mohsen and Sherine will present at the John Hope Franklin Centre as part of the W@C speaker series.

Knowledge

But I can still say
that I love, that I dream,
get inspired,
and get hurt.
The booming of the poem
vibrates inside iron bars,
but its wrists have never been shackled,
nor has steel ever muzzled its songs,
nor has the voice of an ode become hoarse.

المعرفة

لكني لسه بعرف أقول
وأحب وأحلم وانشرح
وانجرح
صوت القصيدة العالي يتسلل
بين الحديد أبو سلسلة ومعصم
الشعر عمره ف مرة ماتسلسل
ولا صوت غنا بحديد بتكمم
ولا عمر مرة قصيدة صوتها أتنبح

On Thursday evening, our esteemed guests will be hosted by Letters Bookshop in downtown Durham for a soirée of reading and translating. Sherine’s translation will be on sale and Mohsen and Sherine will be delighted to sign your copy!

Our final event, entitled Egypt’s carceral poetry and the public sphere will take place in Duke Libraries RL249 where Mohsen and Sherine will be in discussion with Duke University Professors Frances Hasso and Corina Stan. The hope is to extract commonalities and parallels that help us to understand the carceral experience with respect to care and caring, its reconfiguring of human distances, and its impact on human rights and the suppression of artists.