Bio

David Larsen is a poet and a literary scholar specializing in early Arabic poetry. At the University of California at Berkeley he studied Comparative Literature, and at New York University he teaches in Liberal Studies. His translations have appeared in Denver Quarterly, the Brooklyn Rail, A Public Space, and on the blog Writing Gathering Field. His poetry collections are The Thorn (Faux, 2005) and Zeroes Were Hollow (Kenning, 2022). In 2025, his translation of Ibn Khalawayh’s Names of the Lion (Wave, 2017) will be joined by the Book of Rain of Abu Zayd al-Ansari (also Wave).

Project Description

To support the translation of a selection of poems by Jamil Buthaynah from Arabic. Jamil (d. 701 CE) was a Bedouin poet of the first century of Islam, and a pioneer of ghazal poetry in Arabic. He belonged to the tribe of ‘Udhrah, which was renowned for its poetic tradition of chaste love, and he is remembered exclusively as a love poet. Throughout his poetry are references to Buthaynah, a woman from the ‘Udhri tribe whose parents forbid them from marrying. His forced separation from Buthaynah, and his famous refusal to love anyone else, became the template for countless tales of lovers to follow.