Fady Joudah Speech

Who: Poet Fady Joudah
What: Literature reading
Where: Oregon State University Valley Library
When: Friday, November 13th at 730 pm
Why: As part of the Visiting Writers Series for OSU

On Friday November 13th Oregon State University welcomed poet, Fady Joudah, as part of their “Visiting Writers Series.” Joudah talked about all the interesting places and things he saw while he participated in Doctors Without Borders. He has translated the work of Mahmoud Darwish in The Butterfly’s Burden and If I Were Another, and he is the winner of 2007 Yale’s Younger Poets Prize for his first book The Earth in the Attic.
The audience was lucky enough to hear readings from all of his work and get exposed to a type of writings that most of had never been exposed to.

During Fady Joudah’s speech, he spoke about his recent missions to Darfur-Sudan and Zambia, read poems from his book, and read literature from his favorite authors. His writings were very unique and written in abstract ways. Joudah read writings about his Palestine family heritage, the practices and sufferings of other countries, his favorite poem, A Conversation with Death, from the books he had translated into English, and a poem he had written for his wife. In one of Joudah’s writings about his missions, he spoke of a time where a man asked him “May I please bring along a bag of peanuts for the ride to sell for money to feed my sister bleeding in the hospital?” This got his message across of how hard the times over in Darfur are and just how much our way of life differs. The faces of the audience dropped after hearing of such hardship that was seen.

As he reads the whole audience listens intently because they don’t know what words will be following. Joudah spoke of how his focus is more centered around his family now. He told us a particular story about his daughter, “’my daughter wouldn’t hurt a spider that had nested between her bicycles handles. For two weeks, she waited until it left. If you tear down its web it will simply know that this isn’t a place to call home’ I told her. She replied ‘Isn’t that how people become refugees?’” I thought this story showed how his life had made an impact on a lot of people.

After his readings were over, Joudah took time to answer some questions. Most questions were geared towards his writing methods and style. While others were asked about the personal details behind his readings, for these he declined to comment further due to his depth of personal attachment to them. "More people should give themselves experiences like the one we got tonight." Student Jeremy Bullis of LBCC reflected.

Photo source:http://www.catranslation.org/blog/images/fady-joudah.jpg