Palestinian-American poet and playwright Nathalie Handal.

Released in April 2008 by W.W. Norton & Co, Language for a New Century is an unprecedented anthology of poetry from the East. The IMEU spoke recently with Nathalie Handal, who, along with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, edited the volume.

Can you briefly describe this anthology and what it encompasses?

This anthology celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today from the East, bringing together the works of South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the Diaspora. It was very important for us to include Central Asia because we often forget that it’s part of the East. Of course, included are well-known poets such as Mahmoud Darwish and Bei Dao as well as emerging voices. The collection includes 400 voices from 55 different countries writing in 40 different languages. The work included is diverse in style and aesthetic from political, to apolitical, erotic to experimental.

Another exciting aspect of the anthology is that it is divided into nine thematic sections instead of presenting poets under their respective country. Each section is preceded by a personal essay from the editors. These section-introductions gave us as poets and editors the opportunity to weave our personal stories and histories, and that, combined with our critical perspective of some poems introduced the world of that section.

What inspired you to create such a volume of poetry?

This anthology was conceived following the events of September 11th, 2001. Tina Chang, who is Taiwanese-American, and Ravi Shankar, who is Indian-American, felt solidarity between themselves and others coming from the East or of Eastern descent. They were looking for another poet-editor and they found me through the work I have done with The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology.

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We started this journey together because we felt troubled by the negative views showcased in the media about the East. Although, we did not have solutions for what was going on nor could we explain or define the East so rigidly, we felt a deep need to respond in any way we could. So we went to our natural prayer, poetry. We went to the human voices that have enchanted us and that have changed our lives and spirits. We hope this adds to the ongoing dialogue between East and West.

What is the goal of this effort?

In an age of violence and terrorism - often predicated by cultural ignorance - this anthology is a bold declaration of shared humanness and devotion to the transformative power of art.

It is also a great way for us to share voices. For example, there's the Syrian poet, Mamdouh Adwan, whom people in the West don't really know of; or the Japanese poet Ooka Makoto, who has published over 200 books, or the Korean poet Ko Un. These are amazing writers who are not celebrated enough. This was our opportunity to bring their work to readers. This book is not meant to be representative but dialogic.

As you can imagine it was a tremendous amount of labor and when you deal with a book of this magnitude, unfortunately, some fine voices will be left out, but we tried to find a balance between generations, aesthetics, and poets rarely translated into English but who are well-known in their countries.

40 languages, 55 countries, 400 poets – how did you do it?

It took us six years. We researched the literature of every country - past and present - as well as each country's traditions and folklores; social, historical and political history. We contacted translators, poets, critics, cultural centers, libraries, journals, editors, universities, and so forth in each country. We did intense research.

The criterion for the selection of the work was fulfillment of the premises put forth by the poems themselves; therefore, various schools of poetry from narrative to lyric are represented, as are translations from the more straightforward to the more oblique and experimental.

That said, it wasn't easy because there was a lot of great work we could not include for one reason or another. We tried our best to find the right balance; and mourned for the poems left out.

If I understand it correctly, a big part of this book is to use art, poetry in particular, to bridge the divide between everyday peoples in the "East" and "West" that has been created by leaders and politics. Do you feel poetry is especially well-equipped to do this? Why?

I don't think poetry is necessarily the most equipped, but it certainly is a sacred form of expression. Mostly we went to poetry because as poets and editors, we desperately sought to find a solution, though there was no solution... however, a distinct path to choose was one of further understanding. What we turned to was what was most innate to us: poetry... and rather than focusing on our own personal reactions, we felt that looking outwards towards a wide spectrum of poetry would give us the opportunity for discovery and transformative wisdom.

As you touch on in your intro to "Parsed Into Colors," the anthology brings to light and complicates notions of identity, country, location, language, etc. How has navigating this terrain while putting together this book affected you as a Palestinian, Arab, American, woman who has lived and traveled all over the world? Or how has navigating your own terrain affected the book?

Like most people I have gone through different stages concerning identity. And of course identity has many layers - social, national, religious, and so forth.

My own personal departure was that of searching. And in that search there were moments of confusion, rejection, acceptance, and discovery. Moments filled with light; others haunted by dim shadows unable to set themselves free. I have so many varied cultural, linguistic, and national influences not to mention the constant change in landscapes that have been part of my life. But today I feel I have finally set all the birds free from deep within... a strange serenity has settled inside of me… That isn't to say I don't have 'different' struggles pertaining to identity, only that most of it is not my struggle but that of others; their difficulty in defining my multiplicity.

I have navigated borders most of my life. Dislocation has not been an easy place to exist in. It is a place where the dark is suspended around me all the time but I have also found in this exilic journey, windows of sensual flame. Today, I feel deeply connected to the world. I am Palestinian but I am also French, Latina, American. People think that fragments cannot be whole. I don't view it that way. I cannot separate myself from all that is me. Just like I cannot separate myself from the world - being attentive to the life-beats around us is what is most divine in us.

What do you feel Palestine and the Palestinian poets offer this anthology and its Western readers?

The anthology was divided into thematic sections for a reason, and that is to shed our tendency to define poets 'solely' in relation to their national identity. We wanted readers to go to a human sphere, to our humanity. Thus, the writers in the collection become identified not primarily as Palestinians or Koreans or wherever it is they come from, but as poets, creative souls... conductors of the pages' heartsongs.

That said, I think the works by Palestinians included are varied, thematically and stylistically. Their words inspire, as is the case of all the voices in the book.

Tell us a little about your contribution to the anthology, "Autobiography of Night."

It contributes to the dialogue I hope.

What kind of feedback are you getting from the contributors on this volume?

Everybody is delighted and excited. This book is the most far-reaching collection of Asian and Middle Eastern poetry available.

It's interesting to think about the East in a way we haven't before.