Yasmine Seale

She was born in 777 a few years after her birthplace, Baghdad. She seems to have loved women as much as men, secrecy as much as wine. She set her verses to music but could not perform them in public. She was the daughter of a caliph and the sister of another. Her mother was enslaved. Five poems by Ulayya bint al-Mahdi appear today on @poetsorg and here are three 🌹🌹 All thanks to @nadramabrouk for commissioning these translations and expanding the archive of poetry by Arab women

“Sleepless”, my portrait of Shahrazad as a waking eye leaking words, is at the Courtauld Gallery in London for one more week as part of “Drawing on Arabian Nights”, closing on June 3.

Nizar Qabbani was born 100 years ago today. Damascene, poet, feminist, cook, lifelong romantic and rebel. Chocolate maker’s son and sweet great-uncle. Here we are on my first birthday. For my second, he gave me this poem, The Jasmine Necklace, written out in his neat hand on pink paper. My first translation was a scribble. Here’s another.

Halima, a Bedouin woman, nursing the infant Prophet Muhammad beside his mother Aminah, in green Ottoman miniature from the Siyer-i Nebi, made in Istanbul around 1595

A photograph + five translations of the same haiku for @daisyworldmag lovely calendar of microseasons, each occupied by a different artist. I chose the week when peonies bloom 🌺 with thanks to @zazie_stevens for the invitation

A poem, “Nocturne”, in this week’s @newstatesman — with thanks to @tanjil_rashid_ 🪶

Sea grape leaf with exit wound. Traveller’s tree for Isabel. Thinking of prints again.

“What should be done?” Earlier this month I had the great fortune to spend some time at Baruch College, where I was invited to adapt a story from the 1001 Nights for the stage. I ended up writing a new play based on Dalila the Crafty, one of a group of “rogue tales” that were added to the Nights in the later part of its life — stories set in real cities that deal with socially marginal characters. There are no magical resolutions, only people surviving by their wits. Instead of jinn, which populate the earlier stories, here is an ordinary person taking justice into her own hands. It was a dream to work with director Christopher Scott @theatrebeast who captained us with great panache and assembled a brilliant cast: Antoinette LaVecchia, Jamilah Muhammad, Amir Malaklou, Jack Mastrianni, Victor Almanzar, Mateo Parodi. A dream, too, to work with my incredible brother @orlandoseale on devising and developing the script. I think a thousand students saw it. Thank you for having us @baruchpac — and thank you @priorypots for babysitting so I could spend two weeks buried underground 🎭

Z’s first Eid 🧿 seen by @amirbangs with the best aunties @yasminealsayyad and @minamiinah 💎💎

Proud of this one. A love letter to Niyū Yūrk, then and now, with the brilliant @hibarabstract and @asadfromnyc 💌🗽 First commission since joining the dream team @bidounprojects More at bidoun.org

Ana ❤️ Niyū Yūrk: A Conversation with Hiba Abid and Asad Dandia By Yasmine Seale and Michael C. Vazquez The story of Lady Liberty’s early life as an Egyptian is one I learned only recently, on a walking tour of Lower Manhattan. Focused on a couple blocks of the Financial District, the tour of what was once known as “Little Syria” offered a counter-history that placed a community usually banished to the margins at the heart of American life. Besides the crypto-Egyptian statue, we learned that the first peace treaty signed by the United States was written in Arabic; that both the Vanderbilts and the Roosevelts descend from an infamous Muslim pirate; and that among the habitués of the Dunkin’ Donuts at 19 Rector Street are those who believe that its grounds remain blessed on account of the makeshift mosque, established by an Ottoman consul, that once stood at that address. For Ana ❤️ Niyū Yūrk, Bidoun Senior Editor Michael C. Vazquez sits down with curator Hiba Abid and ambulatory historian Asad Dandia to explore the cornucopia of MENA-Americana that is Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City, an exhibition at New York Public Library, through March 8. Conceived and introduced by Yasmine Seale. Bodega Boys images courtesy of @mahkaeslami Link in BIO

Her child, first of six, in a blanket. Her aging father wearing an amulet. Miracles of ink on paper, in which everything appears woven into one continuous form. Tree rings and meanders, lifelong motifs that she would later carve into redwood doors for her home. Making a mermaid. Making a memorial to the internment camps for Japanese Americans in which she was jailed as a child. Last hours of the Ruth Asawa show, a life spent softening the boundary between the inside and the outside.