Ghassan Zaqtan (Arabic: غسان زقطان; born 1954) is a Palestinian poet, author of ten collections of poetry.
His book “Like a Straw Bird it Follows me” translated by Fady Joudah was awarded the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
His most recent book of poetry, The Silence That Remains, also translated by Fady Joudah, was published in 2017 by Copper Canyon Press.
Ghassan Zaqtan's work has been translated to English, French, Italian, Norwegian, Turkish, German, and other languages.
[10] “Reading Fady Joudah’s remarkable translations of Zaqtan, I was thinking of the great poet and mythmaker of Yugoslavia, Vasko Popa, who also saw violence and wrote the dream-time of his nation.
Like Popa, Zaqtan is unafraid to claim his roots, but also to see the “secret builders Cavafy had awakened / passing through the hills,” digging by his pillow.
Nothing and everything, like air, water, soil, like birds, fish, trees, like love, spirit, our daily words … It lives with us, in and outside us, everywhere, all the time, and yet, we are too often oblivious of this gift.
– Wang Ping - See more at: http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2013-shortlist/fady-joudah/#sthash.hg6NWfAW.dpuf • Early Morning (1980) • Old Reasons (1982) • Flags (1984) • The Heroism of Things (1988) • Ordering Descriptions: Selected Poems (1998) • Not for my Sake (1990) • Luring the Mountain (1999) • A Biography by Coal (2003) • Like a Straw Bird it Follows Me (2008) • The Silence That Remains (Copper Canyon Press, 2017) • Light Sky (1992) • Describing the Past (1995) • Old Carriage with Curtains (2011) Le poeme palestinien contemporain (French Edition)