Ghayath Almadhoun

Poet and filmmaker Ghayath Almadhoun was born in 1979 to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother in a refugee camp in Damascus. He studied Arabic literature at the University of Damascus, emigrated to Sweden in 2008 and was granted Swedish citizenship.

Central themes in Almadhoun’s poetry, which has been translated into numerous languages, are war and destruction, death and flight, exile and homesickness. The lyrical ego bears witness to violence and decline and is the only survivor to lend his voice to the dead. Almadhoun’s first offive volumes of poetry in Arabic was published in 2004. Two collections of poetry have been published in Sweden to date, most recently »Till Damaskus« (tr: To Damascus) in 2014 in collaboration with the Swedish poet Maire Silkeberg, with whom he also created a series of poetry films. The volume was on the list of the best books of 2014 published by the daily newspaper »Dagens Nyheter« and was adapted for Swedish radio. Together with Dutch poet Anne Vegter, he published the poetry collection »ik hier jij daar« (2017; tr: I Here You There). »Adrenalin«, a translation of his poems into English was published in 2017, and in 2018 the volume »Ein Raubtier namens Mittelmeer« (tr: A Predator Called the Mediterranean) made his texts, written between 2006 and 2016, available in German for the first time. Against the backdrop of the catastrophic war in Syria, Almadhoun traces a chronological arc from the first chlorine gas attacks of the First World War to the poison gas attacks by the Syrian regime.

The protagonists of the poems are the victims of the Syrian civil war, the injured, people fleeing and seeking asylum, as well as those who remained in the war zone. The complex, prosaic poems draw on the rich imagery of Arabic poetry and the traditions of European poetry. »Cruelty, brutalization and love are just as universal in Almadhoun’s texts as the language of poetry. They impressively demonstrate that the Palestinian refugee from Syria is much closer to us than some would have us believe« (Deutschlandfunk). In summer 2018, »Ein Raubtier namens Mittelmeer« was voted number 1 on the Weltempfänger best list by the litprom jury: »His poems are characterized by drasticness, absurdity and a great stylistic sensibility«. The »FAZ« wrote about him saying that »He is the great poet of a great catastrophe«. The visual artist Jenny Holzer used Almadhoun’s poems as projections in her projects, including as part of »For Aarhus« (2017, Aarhus City of Culture).

Almadhoun was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-BerlinProgram in 2019. Together with Sylvia Geist, he is the editor of the anthology »Kontinentaldrift – Das Arabische Europa« (2023; tr: Continental Drift – Arab Europe), which brings together poems by 31 Arab poets living in Europe. His most recent book of poems is »I Brought You a Severed Hand« (2024), which once again revolves around the themes of war, violence and trauma.

Almadhoun lives in Stockholm and Berlin.

Status: July 2024

Till Damaskus
[Mit Marie Silkeberg]
Albert Bonniers
Stockholm, 2014
[Ü: Ghayath Almadhoun u. Marie Silkeberg]

Adrenaline
Almutawassit
Milano, 2017
Action Books
Notre Dame, IN, 2017
[Ü: Catherine Cobham]

ik hier jij daar
[Mit Anne Vegter]
Jurgen Maas
Amsterdam, 2017
[Ü: Djûke Poppinga]

Ein Raubtier namens Mittelmeer
Arche
Zürich/Hamburg, 2018
[Ü: Larissa Bender]

I Brought You a Severed Hand
Almutawassit
Mailand, 2024