Haus für Poesie

Siham Bouhlal (b. 1966 in Casablanca, Morocco) is a writer and translator living in Paris. She studied Literature at the Sorbonne. She translates mediaeval and contemporary Arabic texts into French. Her own poems are short and elegant, sensuous and elegiac at the same time. She writes in free verse completely without punctuation so as to enable the reader to experience the rhythm directly. The subjects she deals with in her poetry are the great subjects of all literature – love and death. Although Bouhlal writes her poems in French, their wealth of colours and scents clearly place them in an Arabic tradition. Bouhlal has published three books of verse. Her first book of prose, "Princesse Amazigh", appeared last year.
Publications (a selection):
Le livre de brocart ou La société raffinée de Bagdad au Xe sieclé, Gallimard, 2004.
Poèmes bleus, Tarabuste, 2005.
Songe d´une nuit berbèrer ou La tombe d´épines, Al Manar, 2007.
Corps Lurnière, Al Manar, 2008.
L’art du commensal ou boire dans la culture Arabe, Actes Sud, 2009.
Princesse Amazigh, Al Manar, 2009.