SHUROUK HAMMOUD

 

SHUROUK HAMMOUD

 

Poets Will Meet

 

Poets will definitely meet

Maybe at a cafe where bankrupt people meet

or on a sidewalk where the marginalized smoke their past

or maybe on the stage of some cultural center of some country the war led them to its coasts.

Poets will always meet, believe me

In the used words ‘dictionaries

Stammering on the thresholds of poems,

In the gossip alleys that sharpen the tongues of their poets friends,

Or in an article that talks about plagiarism

Maybe their names become neighbors like corpses on the forgotten books shelves in the bleeding world

But if any of this did not happen

Their eyes will meet on the same line

In a poem that talks about the thread that separates existence from nothingness

 

 

 

I Shrink

 

My friends decrease

Every single day

Like a tree that walks towards its autumn

My friends decreases

As the stairs of the outcasts ‘dreams increase

They decrease like a feast

No one is invited to

My dead friends were decreasing

Whenever my grief waved to them with its salt.

Since dead people prefer sweets

As I heard;

And I have nothing of it to give.

Because I save it all for a day

On which I see my friends decreasing,

Dissolving

Whenever I curl up like a snowball

That does not know

how to melt.

 

 

 

Doubt

 

Doubt is not a wild flower

It does not grow due to chaos of nature

Doubt's flower cannot be killed by salt of tears;

It is used to feelings’ tide.

Doubt's flower cannot be uprooted

either it grows or does not.

It has a memory of remorse,

the color of nights

That are abandoned by its guards,

And a smell that pulsates whenever it wants.

 

 

SHUROUK HAMMOUD

 

SHUROUK HAMMOD born in 1982, a Syrian poetess, editor and literary translator, BA of arts graduate and a master degree graduate of text translation, Damascus University. A member of the Palestinian writers and journalists union. She has three published poetry collections in Arabic language and two published poetry collection in English titled: The night papers and Blind time, which is translated and published in Serbian and Macedonian languages. Her poetry has been translated into 14 languages. And as a translator she has translated 16 books so far, in addition to poems by more than 40 poets from around the world. She has also won many local and international creativity awards. Charles Baudelaire first prize for poetry creativity, 2018. Sylvia Plath medal for writing poetry, 2017. Jack Kerouac prize for poetry, 2016, Italy. Arthur Rimbaud poetry prize, 2016, Italy. NAJI Naaman prize for poetry, 2015, Lebanon. Nazik al-Malaeka poetry prize, 2012, Iraq. Alexandria Library poetry prize, 2012, Egypt