Three days ago, I got the proof for Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Gulf Poetry. A poet blogger who was reading submissions for a journal wrote on his blog awhile ago that when he saw editing an anthology on a cover letter it didn't register for him as a notable accomplishment. He didn't think it should be included on a cover letter at all. Ah, such ignorance. Khaled Mattawa gave me a great analogy for what it's like to edit an anthology. He said that when you set out you think it'll be like inviting a bunch of interesting people over for a pleasant dinner, but in reality it's like managing a large, incredibly busy restaurant, 24 hours a day. Khaled was right. Gathering the Tide weighs in at 400 pages, it took almost 3 years to complete, and it consumed just about everything in its path: time, relationships, my own writing. There are 45 poets in the anthology, almost as many translators, and 70% of the work in the anthology is original, and will appear in English for the first time. The project was difficult from the first moment to the last. One of the biggest hurdles was finding and contacting poets. Poets in the Gulf generally don't have Facebook accounts, and most of them don't work in universities. In Gathering, maybe 6 of the poets teach in a university, the rest are journalists, film makers, physicians, government ministers, business owners, and in one case, the Emir of Dubai. Translating, and editing translated work is slow, painstaking work. Translating from Arabic to English is particularly difficult. But now it's time to look forward not back, though as you can tell, that poet blogger's comment stuck in my craw, a bit. I'm proof-reading the anthology for the millionth, but last time, and that's a really, really good thing.
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