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Andre Naffis-Sahely Biography

André Naffis-Sahely (born 1985) is a poet, critic and translator. He was born in Venice to Italian and Iranian parents, and grew up in Abu Dhabi. He has a BA in History and Politics and an M.Litt in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews.

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Andre Naffis-Sahely Quotes

As Trevor Noah recently quipped, the US appears ready to crown its first African dictator: Donald Trump.

Appears, Crowns, Dictator, Firsts, Ready, Trump

[Abdellatif Laâbi] was a poet and worked as a high school teacher; and although he hadn't broken any laws, the Moroccan government was determined to "gag" him - I use the term specifically since one of my favorite sequences of his is entitled "The Poem Beneath The Gag. "

Beneath, Entitled, Government, High, School, Teacher

Take Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic, where xenophobic demagogues have been allowed to turn the law-abiding workers who prop up their economies into barbaric freeloaders, all simply to further their nefarious ends.

Abiding, Barbaric, Demagogues, Freeloaders, Law, Sides

In a sense, I never got over Robert Lowell's History. A flawed, infinitely brilliant project I never tire of going back to. It's a modern Inferno, where Lowell plays both Dante and Virgil, guiding us through dozens of illuminating, bitter episodes from human history, all the while managing to hold a mirror to our confused hominid face as it squints at eternity and fails to grasp any of it.

Back, Confused, Flawed, Mirrors, Play

I'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.

Given, Help, Helping, Intent, Opinion, Political

Meanwhile, the disgruntled "natives" of the West remain empty-handed and keep baying for blood, stuck on the caboose of the train, like Bob Dylan used to sing. Despair will always be a merchandize so long as we refuse to confront these lies head-on.

Blood, Caboose, Long, Lying, Meanwhile, Sing

That boom town [Abu Dhabi] proved to be the reef against which my family crashed, the story of many who seek the promised land, and my poetry is a versification of that personal history. History is all I have.

Abu, Family, Land, Stories, Towns, Versification

The real question should be: what makes a good political poem? The possible answers to that question are both obvious and yet still a little too subjective for anyone to ever fully agree on. What do I most wish to see in a political poet? Sublimated rebellion.

Agree, Poet, Political, Question, Real, Wish

I'm mostly surprised by the fact he's still alive; given that people have been trying to silence him for almost fifty years, he really shouldn't be. Aged thirty, Abdellatif [Laâbi's ] was kidnapped from his home in Rabat by plainclothes policemen, bundled into the back of an unmarked car, driven to a dingy gaol, and tortured for days on end.

Fact, Fifty, Home, People, Surprised, Years

Dealing with politically-engaged writers of color like Abdellatif Laâbi 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.

Abdellatif, Editor, Fighting, School, War

Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground.

Aborted, Life, Middle, Pulse, Real

When it comes to the challenges of the actual process, I soldier on as best I can, on my own.

Actual, Challenges, Process, Soldier

Abdellatif [Laâbi] was wildly popular with his students and it wasn't difficult to see why: like them, he knew that average Moroccans were hungry, jobless and desperate. They also knew they were ruled by a paranoid king who was more comfortable with Parisian financiers than his own subjects.

Average, Kings, Parisian, Popular, Students

Whenever poetry and politics are mentioned in the same breath, we tend to miss the point entirely - as I often have - and we ask ourselves whether poetry and politics even belong together, because they're often so poorly married that we think of them as oil and water.

Belong, Married, Missing, Oil And Water, Thinking, Whenever

Everyone wants to be open and inclusive, but nobody wants to pay for it. It's the biggest roadblock to translating living writers, especially poets.

Biggest, Inclusive, Open, Pay, Poet, Want

Translators who choose to work on canonized writers can usually lean on an extensive critical apparatus around either the author or the book in question, especially in the case of writers like [Honore] Balzac and [Emil] Zola.

Book, Cases, Critical, Question, Translators, Zola

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

Poetry, Subliminal, Tea, Way, Write, Writing

Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.

Away, Lifetime, Political, Shy, Subjected, Terrible

I came to poetry at fourteen, in the middle of a booming oil-rush town in southern Arabia without a single public library: Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. All the wealth in the world and not a single intelligent idea as to how to employ it.

Ideas, Intelligent, Oil, Poetry, Single, Southern

To be a political poet means simply to be a poet, and any poet worth their salt will be a political animal in their own peculiar way - they have no choice: politics is one of the many fragments we thread into the tapestry of the poem.

Animal, Choice, Choices, Mean, Tapestry

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