It is hard to find the meticulous writing of someone like Fady Joudah, who is both a physician and poet. Born in Austin, Texas and raised in Libya and Saudi Arabia until the age of nineteen, Joudah has spent much of his life writing about Palestine, family, identity, displacement, love, grief and suffering through the lens of a poet and doctor. Joudah’s upbringing has had a great influence on his writing, as he demonstrates an appreciation of Arabic and Arab literature. His work often feels like a close examination of Arabic and English, at the line level, while also telling a story. He has had a transformative influence on how emotions and stories are accessed, how poetry is a vehicle of experience and memory.

In an interview with Pádraig Ó Tuama for Poets & Writers, Inc., Joudah noted that he had a fascination with the way that “poetry makes music in the mind” as a young child. He particularly wanted to know how poetry survives and outlasts time. With this, his curiosity about poetry was born.

An Early Career In Medicine Informs and Inspires Joudah’s Poetry

Before Joudah entered the literary world as an adult, he was an undergraduate student at the University of Georgia and a medical student at the Medical College of Georgia. He completed his residency at the University of Texas. He worked with Doctors Without Borders in 2002 and in Zambia and Sudan in 2005. In many of his interviews, Joudah references his medical background not as a way to draw a narrative but as another lens to look at suffering.

As a son of two Palestinian parents, Joudah translated important works that helped readers access Arabic poetry. In 2006, Joudah published the translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s “The Butterfly’s Burden.” The next year in 2007, Louise Glück selected his collection “The Earth in the Attic” for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. This collection probes the themes of identity, religion and war, and the way in which we share emotions of love, grief and compassion, no matter where or who we are.

Joudah’s literary life continued into the translation of “If I Were Another” by Mahmoud Darwish – which won the PEN USA Literary Award in 2010 — and the translation of Ghassan Zaqtan’s “Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me.” Both Darwish and Zaqtan’s poetry hold similar themes of love, grief, displacement, written in stories and sharp, witty writing.

In 2013 Joudah published his collections “Alight” and “Textu” with Copper Canyons Press. His work has been highly praised so much that he was named Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry in 2014. His recent collection “[…]” writes poetry into silence, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, and awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize.

Editorial Note: Read our full review of “[…]” here.

Joudah’s award list goes on, but one of his most prized efforts is the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, where he is co-editor and co-founder.

In an interview with Aria Aber for the Yale Review, Joudah notes: “All that remains of old poetry is the music of what it means to be human. And perhaps that’s all we want from poetry. A language of life.”

Notable Themes in Joudah’s Work

Medicine & Poetry

In an interview with The Kenyon Review, Joudah mentions that his curiosity for poetry came before medicine. However, both roles require him to look at suffering at different angles. For a doctor, patients come with their difficulties, hoping for guidance or a solution. In a similar way, readers come to poetry for hope. Joudah reports that he’s grappled with suffering and the role he’s partaken in it. He says: “All I can say about that experience is that the horror of this hierarchy of suffering in which we live our daily lives rarely leaves me.”

Translation of Arab Poets

Joudah’s diligent translations of poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Zaqtan’s works has allowed English readers to delve into Arabic poetry.

Creative Forms

Fady Joudah’s “Textu” received recognition for its unique form of having exactly 160 characters.

He also typed out all the poems in short spurts, on his phone. Joudah also speaks in depth of the ways Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry changed over time, transitioning to longer and more prose-like format at the end of his life (see Darwish’s poem “At the Station of the Train Which Fell of the Map“). Throughout Joudah’s career, he’s been particularly interested in how poetry can change over time.

Author Socials

Fady Joudah does not have a single website where all his work can be found. His work and interviews can be found across a few notable organizations and literary magazines including but not limited to: The Kenyon Review, Milkweed Editions, Copper Canyon Press, The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets. Some praised interviews include an interview with On Being.

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