Najwan Darwish has been called one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation. His poems – often written in response to historical injustices in Palestine and beyond – can be woundingly direct or disconcertingly witty. Embrace is a new selection published as part of the PTC's World Poets Series contains translations made by Atef Alshaer with the UK poet Paul Batchelor.

Join us online for the official launch of this new book with readings from Najwan Darwish and Atef Alshaer along with a discussion of the poems and the translation process with the World Poets Series editor Edward Doegar, the PTC's Commissioning Editor.

There are two ticket types available for this event: simple admission or admission with a preorder of Darwish's book: Embrace.

Najwan Darwish is a Palestinian poet born in Jerusalem. He published his first book of poetry in 2000 and has been an important literary figure ever since. He has published eight books in Arabic, and his work has been translated into over twenty languages. The New York Review Books, which published the English translation of his collection Nothing More to Lose in 2014, describes him as ‘one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation’.

Darwish has co-founded and directed cultural projects throughout the Arab world and served as the literary advisor to the Palestine Festival of Literature. He has held many key positions in cultural journalism and has been the Chief Cultural Editor of the Arabic-language London-based newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed since 2014. Darwish lives between Jerusalem and Haifa.

Atef Alshaer is a Senior Lecturer in Arabic Studies at the University of Westminster. He was educated at Birzeit University in Palestine and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of several publications in the fields of language, literature and politics, including Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World, 2016 and The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (with Dina Matar and Lina Khatib), 2014.

Alshaer regularly contributes to academic and media outlets, including the BBC, Independent, I-Newspaper, Electronic Intifada, Radio Monocle, al-Arabi al-Jadid and Aljazeera. He also writes and translates poetry. He has been active translator for the Poetry Translation Centre since 2008.

Paul Batchelor was born in Northumberland. His first book, The Sinking Road, was published by Bloodaxe in 2008, and in 2014 he published a chapbook, The Love Darg, with Clutag. His recent poems have appeared in The London Review of Books and Poetry.

Paul has won a number of prizes for his work, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2003, the Times Stephen Spender Prize for Translation in 2009, and the Editor’s Prize for Reviewing from the Poetry Foundation of America in 2018. He is Director of Creative Writing at Durham University.