Ghayath al-Madhoun
غياث المدهون
1979–
Yarmouk refugee camp, Damascus, Syria
A Palestinian poet of two exiles — his family fled Palestine for Syria, and war later drove him from Damascus to Stockholm — al-Madhoun writes prose poems of siege, asylum, and a longing with the mass of Einstein's equations.
Ghayath al-Madhoun was born in 1979 in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, to a Palestinian father from Gaza and a Syrian mother from Daraa. Stateless for the twenty-nine years he lived in Syria, he studied Arabic literature at Damascus University and published his first collections there, before leaving for Sweden in 2008, where he was granted asylum; he now lives between Stockholm and Berlin. His is a double exile: a Palestinian born outside Palestine, and a Syrian refugee in Europe.
Writing mostly prose poetry, al-Madhoun became one of the most translated Arabic poets of his generation — his work has appeared in some thirty languages. His English-language collections translated by Catherine Cobham, Adrenaline (2017) and I Have Brought You a Severed Hand (2025), gather poems written under the shadow of the Syrian war: “Massacre,” “How I became…,” “Schizophrenia,” and “I Can’t Attend.” He also collaborated with the Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg on the book Till Damaskus (2014) and on poetry films about the Syrian war.
Selected works
- Kulama Ittasa’at al-Madina Daqat Ghurfiti (Each Time the City Expanded, My Room Became Narrower) (2008)
- La Astati’ al-Hudur (I Can’t Attend) (2014)
- Adrenaline, translated by Catherine Cobham (2017)
- I Have Brought You a Severed Hand, translated by Catherine Cobham (2025)
Sources
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Explore Ghayath al-MadhounConnected in the archive
10 connected records10 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
born in — 1 record
- Yarmouk Campمخيّم اليرموك
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: birthplace: "Yarmouk refugee camp, Damascus, Syria" → Yarmouk Camp (Damascus, Syria)
written by them — 1 record
- I Can't Attend
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: poetSlug: "ghayath-al-madhoun" → Ghayath al-Madhoun
on a related subject — 8 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- A Long Walk from Gaza
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "diaspora".
- Enter Ghost
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "diaspora".
- I Saw Ramallah
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- Men in the Sun
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "exile".
- and 2 more
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- Chicago
“Ghayath al-Madhoun.” Poetry, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/poetry/ghayath-al-madhoun.- MLA
“Ghayath al-Madhoun.” Poetry, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/poetry/ghayath-al-madhoun. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-ghayath-al-madhoun, title = {Ghayath al-Madhoun}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/poetry/ghayath-al-madhoun}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }