Podcast on Gulf Almanac Lore
My podcast with Ahmed AlMaazmi and Tamara Fernando is posted online on the New Books Network.
Tag: poetry
Book Launch on Almanac Lore of the Arab gulf
I will be giving a book launch on my recent book on Gulf almanac lore via Zoom for the Qatar National Library on February 22, 2023. Details about…
19th Century Song called “Yemen”
In 1894 the composer Harry G. Martin wrote a piece of sheet music called “Yemen,” drawing on a stanza in the famous poem Lalla Rookh by Thomas Moore.…
Seasonal Knowledge and Arab Gulf Almanacs
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book: Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition of the Arab Gulf. Details about the book, including a free…
Where are the Himyarite Kings?
The war that has dragged on in Yemen for seven years has created a major humanitarian disaster. Yemen has experienced war and conflict before since the early days…
Writing Life No. 16: An Interview with Warwick Anderson by James Dunk
Figure 1: Writing and thinking in anticipation of writing: notes stacked in files next to a computer (Warkwick’s desk). In the early days of freedom after a long…
Lament for Yemen
Lament for Yemen Yemen,your body lies crushedbeneath the rubble that was the homewhere you were bornyour blood floods the landbreaks the terraced slopeswhere sorghum supplied every needyour br…
Goethe, as West embraces East
There is an interesting article on Qantara about the significance of the German poet Goethe’s famous West-Östliche Divan, first published 1819. To read an English translation, click here.
Poetry and the Poet
by George Nicolas El-Hage, Ph.D. Poetry is the language of prophecy spoken by the angels and gods when they populated this earth before the fall. Hence, the poet…
Ethnographic Poetry and Academic Writing: A Reflection
“Whatever your eye can see, it’s vecik.” This line resonated with me while I was conducting my fieldwork in Taiwan with the indigenous Paiwan village known as Paridrayan.…
Googling Ibn Majid
One of the most famous Arab navigators is the Omani Ahmad b. Majid, who flourished in the latter half of the 15th century. If you google his name…
Pythagorus in Egypt
The Greek mathematician Pythagorus, considered the founder of mathematics, left his home in Samos for Egypt in 535 BCE. A decade later he was captured and taken prisoner…
Academic Fictions: You are John
ff 1. There are two twins sat on the beach but one is farther up the shore, closer to West Point, or right inside it, depending on which…
Nai Barghouti – “About a human” by Mahmoud Darwish
A beautiful song by Mahmoud Darwish, sung by the Palestinian Nai Barghouti.
Teaching Literature on the Arabian Peninsula
Even after 15 years of teaching literature on the Arabian Peninsula, I still worry about finding the right texts for my students. They are majoring in English language,…
Rapping in Sakha
In Yakutsk, hip hop can be poetic, nostalgic, and even subversive. What can this inventive genre say about language relocalization and maintenance? A crowd gathers at Muus Khaia…
Omens of an Intellectual Death
Found Poems on “Scholarly Knowledge” from Promotion Review Letters by Dr. REDACTED, Professor of Anthropology, REDACTED University Dedicated to Dell Hymes, who once said, “One should react to the…
Homage to Those Who Hollered before Me/Meditations on Inheritances and Lineages, Anthropological and Otherwise
Homage to Those Who Hollered before Me Silence chose me I didn’t choose silence silence immobilized me I could not breathe in my own skin without breaking the…
A Fieldpoem for World Poetry Day
How we practice and write ethnography matters. Poetry is one way to understand what it feels like to be human at a particular time and place. The difference…
Breathing Room: Poetic Form as Resistance to Convention in the Ethnography of Suffering by Casey Golomski
Here I ruminate on recent writing experiments at the convergence of poetry and ethnography as a means to convey experiences of suffering. Recent ethnographies of suffering highlight innovative…
Hallie Wells comments on p. 99 of her dissertation
My dissertation examines how slam poets in Madagascar have forged a novel form of public discourse that emphasizes both freedom of speech and accountability for one’s speech. This…
Processing Settler Toxicities: Part II
This second instalment of a 2+ part post is adapted from a presentation at the 2018 Cultures of Energy Symposium at Rice University. Many thanks to everyone who…
Observations and reflections
Four Poems, Spring 2018 1) I remember you, abuela. The tortillas and the way you touched the comal to check the temperature. I want to ask you things…