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 selected poems, essays, and biographical material on the linked source.
Explore Ghayath al-Madhoun