Poet Zeina Hashem Beck [afikra Conversations]

Join us as we interview poet Zeina Hashem Beck on our afikra Conversations series on May 25

Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her writing covers a variety of topics: Arab culture, home, exile, family narratives, language, the body, love, and faith. Her poetry often exists at the intersections of the personal & the political, the divine & the profane, the self & the other. She is interested in poetry that creates small bridges and insists on loving the broken world. Her third poetry collection, titled O, will be published by Penguin Books in Summer 2022. Her second full-length collection, Louder than Hearts, won the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. She’s also the author of two chapbooks: 3arabi Song, winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and There Was and How Much There Was, a smith|doorstop Laureate’s Choice. Her first book, To Live in Autumn, won the 2013 Backwaters Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, The Southeast Review, The Adroit Journal, Triquarterly, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Zeina invented The Duet, a bilingual poetic form where English and Arabic exist separately and in relationship to each other. Her poem “Maqam” won Poetry Magazine’s 2017 Frederick Bock Prize. She lives in Dubai, where she has founded the poetry open mic night PUNCH.

afikra has a series of fabulous interviews that can be found here:  https://www.afikra.com/events