BZU graduate student's poetry collection applauded and recommended for publishing

Bader Othman, a student in the Contemporary Arab Studies Master's Program at Birzeit University, received praise and a publishing recommendation for his collection of poems, “A Translation of Bach,” from the panel of judges at the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Writer Award – part of the foundation’s Culture and Arts Program.

The panel, which is composed of author and novelist Akram Msallam, from Palestine; poet Iman Mersal, from Egypt; poet and novelist Sinan Antoon, from Iraq; and academic and literary critic Dr. Zeina Halabi, from Lebanon, reviewed 49 poetic works submitted by Palestinian writers between the ages of 22 and 35 who hail from different parts of Palestine.

“Modernity and originality permeate the works of this collection. It presents a spiritual experience in its writing and reflects its poetic nature in a double emulation of church music and religious metaphors. The collection succeeds in bringing to the reader an amalgam of internal euphoria and that which arises from the interweaving of music in a language that was bathed in holy water,” said the panel of “A Translation of Bach.”