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I will always say where I am
What a strange land this is
I don’t remember the names of the birds
To make me a palm with its wings?
Here I came suddenly
Like a sleepwalker, like a blind man
Banging my cane on all the chairs, the door
The dragonflies in the window.
For a long time I have been among people I love
In a white city
With streets sloping towards the sky
And a fortress without jesters or queens.
It is possible that my bones are
Strangers, I may die
Dreaming of a country of dates
And a lapis lazuli ship of Phoenician sailors.

Giovanni Quessep
Giovanni Quessep is one of the most important and innovative Colombian poets, and one of the eminent poets of the Levantine diaspora from Latin America. He was born on January 6, 1939 in San Onofre, northern Colombia to a father from Tannourine Lebanon, and a mother from Bogotá. He published his first poetry book, After Paradise in 1961, and his second, Being is not a Fable in 1968 while he was in Italy. This collection marked the start of his unique poetic voice. Quessep’s voice is unmistakable, and his 14 poetry collections, and three volumes of collected poems has been widely written about and deeply admired in Colombia. He was awarded the Premio Nacional De Poesía José Asunción Silva in 2004, the IX Premio Nacional de Poesía por Reconocimiento de la Universidad de Antioquia in 2007, the Premio Mundial de Poesía René Char in 2015, among others. Nathalie Handal is translating poems from his entire body of work in a collection entitled, The Other Blue: Collected Poems 1968-2025.

Nathalie Handal
Nathalie Handal is described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” She has lived in four continents, is the author of 10 award winning books, translated into over 15 languages, including Life in a Country Album, winner of the Palestine Book Award; the flash collection The Republics, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers,” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award. Handal is the recipient of awards from the PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and Africa Institute, among others. She is professor of literature and creative writing at New York University-AD, and writes the literary travel column, “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders magazine.