Boulus was born in Habbaniyah, Iraq, to Assyrian parents. He studied journalism at Baghdad University and later worked as a journalist, before moving to Beirut in 1967, where he worked as a journalist and a translator. He later emigrated to the United States, and from 1968 onwards lived in San Francisco. He studied comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, and sculpture at Skyline College. An avant-garde and thoroughly modern writer, his poetry has been published in major Arab magazines. He translated poems by Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others into Arabic.
Sargon Boulus
Sargon Boulus
/
سركون بولص
Selected bibliography
- ناقصة, Incomplete Biography*, Al Kamel Verlag, Germany, 2018
- الحياة قرب الأكروبول, Life Near the Acropolis*, Al Kamel Verlag, Germany, 2008
- عظمة أخرى لكلب القبيلة, A Bone for the Tribe’s Dog*, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut/Baghdad, 2008
- الوصول إلى مدينة أين, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut/Baghdad, 2003
- حامل الفانوس في ليل الذئاب, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut/Baghdad, 1996
- إذا كنت نائما في مركب نوح, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut/Baghdad, 1998
English translations:
- Knife Sharpener: Selected Poems, Banipal Books, UK, 2009, trans. by the author
- “Portrait of an Iraqi Person at the End of Time” (text available) Jadaliyya, 2010, trans. by Sinan Antoon
- “Siege” (text available), Cultural Baggage, 2010, trans. by the author and Alistair Eliot
- “An Elegy for Sindbad Cinema” (text available), Poetry International, 2007, trans by. Kees Nijland (also available in Dutch)
- Tigris, a literary anthology put together by Boulos containing work by Boulus and others, in translation by Boulus and Etel Adnan, courtesy Arablit and Salih J Altoma.
French translation:
- L’éclat qui reste de Sargon Boulus (excerpt available), Actes Sud/Sindbad, 2014, an anthology selected and trans. by Antoine Jockey
Press
Sargon Boulus, poète du passage intérieur (in French) by L’Orient littéraire, June 2014
It was an exciting time for Arabic poetry, with a rejection of classical forms that had held sway for a millennium and more by The Guardian, January 2008
Sargon Boulus has the rare experience of being an Arab poet who has been part of the American poetry scene since the late 1960s by Banipal, January 2008
Book(s) featured on this site
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A collection of poetry about a poet’s life in exile in the US
Reviewed by Diqqa.net