Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul to tour Ireland and translate his poetry into Irish

Award-winning Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul is billed to read at multiple events across Ireland as part of his visit from April 25-29.

On 26 April  Makhoul will read at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin at 6.30pm at a special welcome reception presented in association with Poetry Ireland and supported by Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann.

On 27 April he will travel onward to Cork to speak at a public demonstration organised by the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign and later that same night Makhoul will headline Cork World Book Festival as part of an innovative multilingual poetry event titled Listen to the Birds at Triskel Arts Centre, Cork.

This festival event, presented in association with IMRAM and Poetry Ireland, will feature Makhoul reading his own poetry in Arabic; English versions by Raphael Cohen; and translations into Irish by esteemed poets Eibhlís Carcione, Louis de Paor, and Áine Uí Fhoghlú.

Curator Keith Payne will chair a conversation on literary translation. The translation project is curated by Liam Carson of IMRAM and Donegal poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin.

Makhoul and his English translator, Raphael Cohen (travelling from Cairo), are being hosted during their stay in Ireland byNí Churreáin herself who said that: ‘In addition to celebrating Marwan’s poetry, a key focus of this trip is the celebration of poetry across borders and cultures, and the act of bearing witness in poetry to social injustice".

Concluding in Irish the Donegal native said she was very grateful to take part in the event and that there was strength in solidarity: "Tá mé fíorbhuíoch de gach duine atá páirteach sa chlár seo. Tá muid níos láidre le chéile!’

Speaking of his own work Makhoul says: ‘I’m a voice that tells people about our identity, and how we have worked to preserve it as Palestinian, Arab, and in connection with our people,’

Born to a Palestinian father and Lebanese mother, Makhoul grew up in Beqeia surrounded by a mountainous landscape that is omnipresent in his poetry.

Makhoul’s poetry collections include Land of the Sad Passiflora, Where Is My Mom, and A Letter from the Last Man.

During the 2023 Gaza war, lines from one of his poems were adopted as a slogan by tens of millions of protestors and written on the walls of cities around the world: ‘in order for me to write poetry that isn’t /political, I must listen to the birds / and in order to hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent’.

Tickets for the Listen to The Birds event are available here.