Poetry Beyond Borders: Ghayath Almadhoun and Catherine Cobham

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We’re excited to announce that we’re expanding Push the Boat Out's online international programme! Join us for the launch of a series of conversations between international poets and their English-language translators. Hear contemporary international poetry in the original language, and be a fly on the wall for the conversations which take place between poet and translator – from exploring the world of their poetry to getting into the nitty gritty of how and what to translate.

Our first pairing will be Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun alongside his translator Catherine Cobham. Ghayath's most recent collection I Have Brought You a Severed Hand transports the reader between Palestine, Syria, Germany and Sweden, reasserting the stakes for those unable to leave their states of imprisonment while suggesting nonetheless that hope may be inseparable from the absurdity of violence. The collection destabilises the very hierarchies of the page, transgressing the borders of the poem, the nation, the body, and even between speaker and addressee, poet and reader.

Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet born in Damascus in 1979, and who moved to Sweden in 2008. He has published five volumes of Arabic poetry, with his latest, I Have Brought You a Severed Hand, released in 2024. His poetry has been translated into nearly 30 languages. Almadhoun has also created several poetry films and curated numerous events, readings, and literary anthologies. He has collaborated extensively with scholars and artists. His poems have been included in projects by U.S. artist Jenny Holzer and German musician Blixa Bargeld, among others. In 2025, his new book, I Have Brought You a Severed Hand, translated by Catherine Cobham, was published simultaneously in English translation by Action Books in the U.S. and Divided Publishing in London and Brussels. Almadhoun currently divides his time between Berlin and Stockholm.

Catherine Cobham taught Arabic language and literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland for many years and was head of the department of Arabic and Persian from 2011 until 2021. She has translated the work of a number of Arab writers, including poetry by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun, Tammam Hunaidy and Nouri al-Jarrah, and novels and short stories by Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan al-Shaykh, Fuad al-Takarli and Jamal Saeed. She has written articles in academic journals and co-written with Fabio Caiani The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts (Edinburgh University Press, 2013). Her translation of a collection of poems by Abd al-Karim al-Ahmad is currently being considered for publication and she is translating a collection of stories by Muhammad Khudayyir.