Iman Mersal ( ar, إيمان مرسال; born November 30, 1966 Mit 'Adlan, Dakahlia,

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

) is an Egyptian

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

Life

Iman Mersal graduated from

Mansoura University Mansoura University was founded in 1972 in Mansoura city, Egypt. It is in the middle of the Nile Delta. It is one of the biggest Egyptian universities and has contributed much to the cultural and scientific life in Mansoura and Egypt. History T ...

, and received her MA and PhD from

Cairo University Cairo University ( ar, جامعة القاهرة, Jāmi‘a al-Qāhira), also known as the Egyptian University from 1908 to 1940, and King Fuad I University and Fu'ād al-Awwal University from 1940 to 1952, is Egypt's premier public university ...

. She co-founded ''Bint al-Ard (Daughter of the Earth)'', which she co-edited from 1986 to 1992. She immigrated to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, in 1998, and then to

Edmonton, Alberta Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city anch ...

with her family in 1999. Mersal serves as Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a Public university, public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexande ...

. Her work has appeared in ''Blackbird'', ''The American Poetry Review'',''Parnassus'',''The New York Review of Books'', and ''Paris Review''. She has read at numerous poetry festivals around the world, including the London Poetry Parnassus, billed as the biggest gathering of poets in world history, where she represented Egypt. Selected poems from Mersal's oeuvre have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Hindi, and Italian. ''These Are Not Oranges, My Love'', a selection of Mersal's work translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow Press, New York in 2008. One of her poems was selected for inclusion in the volum
''Fifty Greatest Love Poems''
Another ("Solitude Exercises") concludes
chronological anthology
featuring 38 Arab poets spanning 15 centuries, from Imru' al-Qays to Mahmoud Darwish. In her book ''How to Mend: On Motherhood and its Ghosts'', Iman Mersal "navigates a long and winding road, from the only surviving picture of the author has with her mother, to a deep search through what memory, photography, dreams and writing, a search of what is lost between the mainstream and more personal representations of motherhood and its struggles. How to mend the gap between the representation and the real, the photograph and its subject, the self and the other, the mother and her child." The book was first published in Arabic by Kayfa ta and Mophradat in 2016, and the English edition was published in 2018 by Kayfa ta and Sternberg Press. She lives with her husband, ethnomusicologis
Michael Frishkopf
and their two sons (Mourad and Joseph) in Edmonton, Canada. Mourad is currently a cognitive science major at Yale.

Works

*2019. ''Fi Athar Enayat al-Zayyat'' (In the footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat). Cairo: Al Kotob Khan. *2016. ''Kayfa talta'em: 'an al umuma wa ashbahuha (How to Mend: Motherhood and its ghosts)''. Cairo: Kayfa ta, Brussels: Mophradat. *2013. ''Hatta atakhalla `an fikrat al-buyut (Until I Give Up The Idea Of Home)'' Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat, Beirut: Dar al-Tanwir. *2006. ''Jughrafiya Badila (Alternative Geography)''. Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat. *2004. ''Mamarr mu'tim yasluh lita'allum al-raqs (A Dark Alley Suitable for Learning to Dance)'', second edition, Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat. *1997. ''al-Mashy Atwal Waqt Mumkin (Walking As Long As Possible)''. Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat. *1995. ''Mamarr mu'tim yasluh lita'allum al-raqs (A Dark Alley Suitable for Learning to Dance)'', first edition. Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat. *1990. ''Ittisafat (Characterizations)''. Cairo: Dar al-Ghad.

Translation to Arabic

*2016. ''ذبابة في الحساء. (A Fly in the Soup)'', Charles Simic, Iman Mersal, translator. Cairo: El-Kotob Khan. *2011. ''Bira fi Nadi al-Bilyardu. ( Beer in the Snooker Club)'', Waguih Ghali, Iman Mersal, co-translator. Cairo: Dar el- Shrouk.

Works in English

*2022: ''The Threshold: Poems''. trans. Robyn Creswell. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374604271 *2019: Contributor to ''A New Divan: Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West'' *2018. ''How to Mend: Motherhood and its ghosts''. Cairo: Kayfa ta, Berlin: Sternberg Press. Translated by Robin Moger. *2008. ''These are not oranges, my love: selected poems'', Sheep Meadow Press,

Awards

Sheikh Zayed Book Award The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is a literary award begun in the UAE. It is presented yearly to "Arab writers, intellectuals, publishers as well as young talent whose writings and translations of humanities have scholarly and objectively enriched Arab ...

, 2021

References

External links

"This Is Not Literature, My Love"
''Al-Ahram'', Youssef Rakha, 11–17 February 2010
poets blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mersal, Iman 1966 births 20th-century Egyptian poets Egyptian expatriates in Canada Living people Mansoura University alumni Cairo University alumni University of Alberta alumni People from Dakahlia Governorate 21st-century Egyptian poets Egyptian women poets English-language poets 20th-century Egyptian women writers 21st-century Egyptian women writers