The Self,
The Sea

Translators note:

Recognizing that I am not native speaker I let the poems lead me, word by word, verse by verse. As I followed, I took note of the repetitiveness and rhythms in an effort to retain the musicality of the poem. It’s within their use of rhythm that storytelling and culture remains alive.

In the translation process I was often confronted with, and hindered by, the constraints of the English language. One of these most obvious and persistent limitations were the English words themselves. These words were restricting because they lacked the nuance of the Arabic ones, carried heavy connotations, or just didn’t fit right.