{"id":7749,"date":"2026-04-15T22:57:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T22:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josephrauch.com\/therauchreview\/?p=7749"},"modified":"2026-04-15T22:57:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T22:57:36","slug":"fady-joudah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josephrauch.com\/therauchreview\/author-profiles\/fady-joudah\/","title":{"rendered":"Fady Joudah: Poetry & Palestine Through the Eyes of a Doctor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with P\u00e1draig \u00d3 Tuama for Poets & Writers, Inc., Joudah noted that he had a fascination with the way that \u201cpoetry makes music in the mind\u201d as a young child. He particularly wanted to know how poetry survives and outlasts time. With this, his curiosity about poetry was born.<\/p>\n

An Early Career In Medicine Informs and Inspires Joudah\u2019s Poetry<\/h2>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s \u201cThe Butterfly\u2019s Burden.\u201d The next year in 2007, Louise Gl\u00fcck selected his collection \u201cThe Earth in the Attic\u201d for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

Joudah\u2019s literary life continued into the translation of \u201cIf I Were Another\u201d by Mahmoud Darwish \u2013 which won the PEN USA Literary Award in 2010 \u2014 and the translation of Ghassan Zaqtan\u2019s \u201cLike a Straw Bird It Follows Me.\u201d Both Darwish and Zaqtan\u2019s poetry hold similar themes of love, grief, displacement, written in stories and sharp, witty writing.<\/p>\n

In 2013 Joudah published his collections \u201cAlight\u201d and \u201cTextu\u201d with Copper Canyons Press. His work has been highly praised so much that he was named Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry in 2014<\/a>. His recent collection \u201c[…]\u201d writes poetry into silence, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, and awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize.<\/p>\n

Editorial Note:<\/b> <\/i>Read our full review of \u201c[…]\u201d here<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joudah\u2019s award list goes on, but one of his most prized efforts is the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize<\/a>, where he is co-editor and co-founder.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Aria Aber for the Yale Review, Joudah notes: \u201cAll that remains of old poetry is the music of what it means to be human. And perhaps that\u2019s all we want from poetry. A language of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notable Themes in Joudah\u2019s Work<\/h2>\n

Medicine & Poetry<\/h3>\n

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\u2019s grappled with suffering and the role he\u2019s partaken in it. He says: \u201cAll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translation of Arab Poets<\/h3>\n

Joudah\u2019s diligent translations of poets like Mahmoud Darwish<\/a> and Ghassan Zaqtan\u2019s works<\/a> has allowed English readers to delve into Arabic poetry.<\/p>\n

Creative Forms<\/h3>\n

Fady Joudah\u2019s \u201cTextu\u201d received recognition for its unique form of having exactly 160 characters.<\/p>\n

He also typed out all the poems in short spurts, on his phone<\/a>. Joudah also speaks in depth of the ways Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s poetry changed over time, transitioning to longer and more prose-like format at the end of his life (see Darwish\u2019s poem “At the Station of the Train Which Fell of the Map<\/a>“). Throughout Joudah\u2019s career, he\u2019s been particularly interested in how poetry can change over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Books by Fady Joudah<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\"Elipsis,<\/a><\/span><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div>
READ OUR REVIEW<\/span><\/a><\/div>
BUY NOW<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>
‘[\u2026]<\/a>‘<\/a><\/div><\/div>
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Milkweed Editions<\/em>, 2024<\/strong><\/div><\/div>
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A formally daring and politically urgent collection written partly during the Gaza bombardments of late 2023. The book confronts erasure, Palestinian presence and moral responsibility. The collection has been described by critics as urgent, devastating and essential reading. Joudah received several awards for \u201c[…]\u201d including:<\/p>\n