Maram Al-Masriwas born in Latakia, Syria, and moved to France following the completion of English Literature studies at Damascus University. She is the recipient of many prestigious literary prizes, including the Prix d'Automne de Posie de la Socit des Gens De Lettres, the Adonis Prize, the Premio Citta di Calopezzati, Il Fiore d'Argento, and the Dante Alighieri Prize. Her collections includee te regarde, Cerise rouge sur un carrelage blanc, Par la fontaine de ma bouche, Elle va nue la libert, Je te menace d'une colombe blanche, Le Rapt,and two anthologies, includingFemmes potes du monde arabe. Hlne Cardona's books includeLife in SuspensionandDreaming My Animal Selves(both Salmon Poetry) and the translations The Abduction (Maram Al-Masri, White Pine Press), Birnam Wood (Jos Manuel Cardona, Salmon Poetry), Beyond Elsewhere (Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, White Pine Press),Ce que nous portons (Dorianne Laux, ditions du Cygne), and Walt Whitman'sCivil War Writingsfor WhitmanWeb. The recipient of over 20 honors & awards, including the Independent Press Award, International Book Award and Hemingway Grant, she holds an MA in American Literature from the Sorbonne, worked as a translator for the Canadian Embassy, and taught at Hamilton College and Loyola Marymount University.
Critic Annalisa Bonomo writes that what drives Al-Masri's poetic achievements is undoubtedly her truly unique and personal view of the world. Although the author is steeped in her own Syrian cultural background, the real appeal of Al-Masri's verses consists, like any genuine artistic expression, in their capacity to transform a poetic vision into a universally shared experience. Lionel Ray declares that, behind the simple gestures of daily life, Maram Al-Masri hints at a deep presence. Thus proceeds all true poetry: behind the celebration of the ephemeral, the moment seized by the words resonates with this need in us of the eternal. Like a perfume of Edenic innocence. For Syrian poet Adonis, Maram al-Masri expresses all of this in a style that seems to have arisen prior to art, as if it were purely formless or a project, as if writing was an organic, non-technical issue. She expresses this passion in everyday language, simple, warm, irrepressible, on the verge of meeting her body, but stopping almost at the edge of language. And Andre Ughetto calls her poems the 'diary' of a quest for love, as well as of its disenchantment. Her song reveals her concerns, including that of remaining in exile in her own poetic language: Her children inherit... A mother who writes poems / in a language they don't understand.