As Trevor Noah recently quipped, the US appears ready to crown its first African dictator: Donald Trump.
Andre Naffis-SahelyI'm of the opinion that poetry is always political, and cannot help but be so, regardless of the poet's intent, given that refusing to deal in politics is in itself a political act.
Andre Naffis-SahelyRegardless of whether the authors I've translated have been "dead and canonized," or "living and established," or even simply "emerging," I must put myself to the same, old test: "can I do their texts justice?" I've translated twenty-one books, and except for three commissions, I "hand-picked" all my authors on the basis of whether my own peculiar idiosyncrasies would complement their own.
Andre Naffis-SahelyDealing with politically-engaged writers of color like Abdellatif Laรขbi and Rashid Boudjedra - who ran away from school aged sixteen to fight against the French in the Algerian war - first requires convincing an editor to take a chance on them, which very few like to do these days.
Andre Naffis-Sahely