Professor
kmattawa@umich.eduOffice Information:
3240 Angell Hall
hours: 2:30-3:30 and by appointment.
Postcolonial Studies; Graduate Faculty; English; MFA Faculty; Twentieth Century American; American; Creative Writing; Poetry and Poetics
Education/Degree:
Ph.D., Duke University, 2009 MFA, Indiana University, 1994
Current Courses
ENGLISH 340-003
Studies in Poetry
ENGLISH 424-002
Advanced Poetry Writing
Highlighted Work and Publications
A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor
Maram Al-Massri (translated by Khaled Mattawa)
Poetry. Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa. Syrian poet Maram al-Assri writes of love and the place of women in the modern age with striking candor and intensity. "I am this mix between the submissive and rebellious woman," she writes, "my freedom is so difficult and so desired." Her poems invoke a world where women are trapped and men flow freely, of the intoxicating power of seduction and the intensity of lust, of the security of relationships and muffled explosions of emotion. Al-Massri herself straddles racial, religious, and cultural worlds. Born in Latakia, Syria, she moved to Paris... See More
Amorisco
Khaled Mattawa
Poetry. Khaled Mattawa was born in Benghazi, Libya, and immigrated to the United States in his teens. This is his third book of poetry. As a poet, he is a citizen of the world. Both American and an exile, he writes of the beauties and grievances of history and culture in language born of profound experience. The author of ISMAILIA ECLIPSE and ZODIAC OF ECHOES and translator of three volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry, Mattawa has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA translation grant. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon ... See More
Invitation to a Secret Feast
Joumana Haddad (edited and intro by Khaled Mattawa)
Poetry. Translation. Joumana Haddad, an unrivaled poetry star in Arabic (and many other languages) famous for her deeply passionate poetic visions, has finally given the English-speaking world entry into her luscious work. In these gorgeous translations, her voice remains sumptuous and alluring, carefully drawing the reader in before unveiling soulful insight and wisdom. This is Lebanese-born Joumana Haddad's fifth collection of poetry to be published. She is highly regarded as a poet not only throughout the Arab-speaking world, but also in Europe and Latin America. She has a strong presence on... See More
Ismailia Eclipse: Poems
Khaled Mattawa
ReviewKhaled Mattawa is unique among poets writing in English. Mattawa emigrated to the United States in 1979, at age 15, after spending his childhood in Libya. Separated from his Libyan parents and family, introduced to the United States and educated in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Indiana, Mattawa writes in English, his life and poetry inseparably rooted in both Arab and U.S. cultures. It would be an oversimplification to say that Ismailia Eclipse, a first book, joins the literature of exiled poets. It would be closer to the truth to observe that he has something in common with certain... See More
Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation
Khaled Mattawa
In Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation, Mattawa pays tribute to one of the most celebrated and well-read poets of our era. With detailed knowledge of Arabic verse and a firm grounding in Palestinian history, Mattawa explores the ways in which Darwish’s aesthetics have played a crucial role in shaping and maintaining Palestinian identity and culture through decades of warfare, attrition, exile, and land confiscation. Mattawa chronicles the evolution of his poetry, from a young poet igniting resistance in occupied land to his decades in exile where...
Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems of Amjad Nasser
Amjad Nasser (translated by Khaled Mattawa)
Shepherd of Solitude is Amjad Nasser's first English collection, translated and introduced by the foremost translator of contemporary Arabic poetry into English Khaled Mattawa, with the poems selected by poet and translator from the poet's Arabic volumes over the years 1979 to 2004.Amjad Nasser was born in Jordan in 1955. He is a major contributor to today's Arab poetry scene and has published eight volumes of poetry and two travel memoirs, Flight of Wings (1998) and Under More than One Sky (2002). He works as managing editor and cultural editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily newspaper. A ... See More
These Are Not Oranges, My Love
Iman Mersal (translated by Khaled Mattawa)
"Mersal offers an exquisite daughter-to-father poem. Titled "The Clot," this sequence radiates with a combination of tenderness, humor and anguish unmatched in contemporary Arabic poetry."--From the Introduction by Khaled Mattawa
Tocqueville
Khaled Mattawa
Poetry. "In his masterful fourth collection, Khaled Mattawa is concerned, above all, with the ramifications of a new global culture that most American poets have thus far ignored and neglected, partly out of incomprehension, partly out of fear. By setting himself against such timidity, Mattawa offers his most sustained and experimental reckoning with matters of cultural and social witness. TOCQUEVILLE is part personal lyric, part jeremiad, part shooting script, and part troubled homage to the great wry chronicler of American society evoked in the book's title. It is a book of relentless invention... See More