Golan Haji

Golan Haji
Native name	جولان حاجي
Born	10 November 1977 Amouda, Syria
Occupation	writer, poet, translator
Citizenship	Syria
Alma mater	University of Damascus
Years active	2004-present
Notable works	He Called Out Within The Darknesses, poetry collection
Notable awards	Muhammad-al-Maghout Prize

Golan Haji (Arabic: جولان حاجي; born 10. November 1977) is a Syrian Kurdish writer, poet, and translator. He has published five poetry collections in Arabic, including He Called Out Within The Darknesses, which won the first prize in the Muhammad Al-Maghout Poetry Competition in 2006. He has translated several books from English into Arabic such as Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata and Dark Harbor by Mark Strand. Some of his works are part of Syrian literature in the context of war.

Life and career

Golan Haji was born in Amouda, a Kurdish town in the north of Syria in 1977. He studied at the University of Damascus and earned a bachelor's degree in medicine and a postgraduate degree in pathology. Haji started his literary career when he published his first collection of poetry He Called Out Within The Darknesses in 2004 that was awarded the Muhammad Al-Maghout Prize in poetry. In 2008, he wrote his second collection of poetry Someone Sees You as a Monster, published during the events celebrating Damascus as Arab Capital of Culture.

In 2016, Haji also published a book of non-fiction, for which he interviewed Syrian women who spoke about their experience and stories during the war in Syria. Further, Haji translated several literary works from English into Arabic, including the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata, and Dark Harbor by Canadian-American poet Mark Strand.

A prolific translator from French to Arabic, Haji has translated 38 works of poetry until 2024. His own Arabic poetry has been translated into English, French, Italian and Danish. Since 2012, exiled because of the war in Syria, Haji has lived in Saint-Denis, France. He is married to French writer and translator Nathalie Bontemps.

Works

Arabic poetry

• He Called Out Within The Darknesses (original title: Nada al dulumat), 2004
• Someone Sees You as a Monster (original title: Thamata mat yaraka wahshan), 2008
• Autumn, Here, is Magical and Vast, 2013
• Scale of Injury (original title: Mizan al atha), 2016
• The Word Rejected, 2023

In English translation

• A Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know. Translated by Stephen Watts and Golan Haji, New York: A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2017.

Non-fiction

• Until the War: Women in the Syrian Revolution (original title: ila an kamat al harb: nisaa fi thawra al suryia), 2016

Translations from English

• Al Mirfaa al Muthlim (original title: Dark Harbor), 2002
• Dafatr modelima (original title: The Secret Notebooks), 2011
• Stevenson tahta Ashgar al Nakheel (original title: Stevenson Under the Palm Trees), 2017
• Hai Asakosa (original title: Palm-of-the-hand Stories), 2019

Awards

• 2006: first prize in the Muhammad Al-Maghout Poetry Competition

See also

• Syrian literature
• Modern Arabic poetry

Further reading

• Berrada, Omar; Riggs, Sarah (eds.). "Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets". Litmus Press.
• McManus, Anne-Marie (2018), "Syrian Literature after 2000: Publics, Mobilities, Revolt", Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation.: 215–216 – via academia.edu
• Marylin Hacker (2019). Blazons: New and Selected Poems 2000-2018.[1] Manchester: Carcanet.
• Malu Halasa, Zāhir ʻAmrīn, Nawārah Maḥfūḍ (eds.) (2014). Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline. London: Saqi Books.

External links

• Prose poem Autumn Here is Magical and Vast by Golan Haji, translated from Arabic by Stephen Watts.
• Essay A Note on Syrian Poetry Today, (2013) by Golan Haji.
• 11 poems by Golan Haji in Arabic and English translation on Lyrikline.org