“All poetry is revolution”: Reading and Discussion of Anna Greki’s Algeria, Capital: Algiers with Marine Cornuet and Ammiel Alcalay

This event occurred on:  In 1963, a year after Algerian independence, Anna Greki, an Algerian poet of French descent living in exile in Tunisia, published Algeria, Capital: Algiers, her first poetry collection, in French and Arabic. Greki, 32 at the time, had participated in the Algerian revolution and was arrested, incarcerated and tortured by the French military for her activism. Algeria, Capital: Algiers, translated by Marine Cornuet, and introduced by Ammiel Alcalay, includes poems Greki wrote while in prison and is available in English for the first time. Please join us for a reading and discussion of Greki’s life and work, and of the translation itself.

Marine Cornuet is a Brooklyn-based translator, poet, and editor. Recent publications include Cloche Pèlerine (Le Castor Astral, 2024), a French translation of Kaveh Akbar’s poetry collection Pilgrim Bell, and Algeria, capital: Algiers (Pinsapo Press and Lost & Found, 2024), an English translation of Anna Gréki’s poetry collection Algérie, capitale Algers. She holds an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and is the co-founder of the literary journal Clotheslines. She is a member of the working collective and an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse.

Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s latest books are CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books, his co-translation of Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. In 2017, he received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative; he is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.