Among an unusually rich collection of translations this quarter, Fawzi Karim’s Plague Lands stood out; I was impressed by a poet who could use such unfamiliar material, and preserve so distinctive a voice in exile. read more

Anthony Howell’s [translations] are at one remove from that, versions, based on ‘literal’ translations by Abbas Kadhim, but still working closely with Fawzi Karim. read more

Fawzi Karim was born in Baghdad in 1945 and already felt an internal exile by the late 1960s, leaving permenantly for London in 1978. read more

Baghdad-born poet Fawzi Karim has been living the marginalised life of an exiled poet in the suburbs of London for more than 30 years, regularly publishing books of his verse in Damascus, and contributing to Arabic newspapers in the Gulf. read more

Of these four highly different volumes, Plague Lands and other poem s raises perhaps, the most intersting question about poetry in translation, namely that of the degree of closeness to the orginial and whether this is to be achieved through the literal method or through an attempt whjic aims for a poem in English which meets standards of 'truthfulness to the original' by some other means such as the self-announced 'versions' by Anthony Powell, a poet of considered achievement in his own right, aiming for the versions- those of Robert Lowell would immediately spring to mind- and this will not be the view which decides one way or another on which side of the debate any of us will come down. read more

The odds were stacked against Fawzi Karim: born in Baghdad in 1943 of Shia stock, he was neither a Communist nor a Baathist at a time when being apolitical would inevitably attract attentions of the secret polic. read more