In 2004/5, poet-curator-translators Omar Berrada and Sarah Riggs created Tamaas,an intercultural arts association, with a focus on creation-based projects intersecting poetry with translation, film, dance, education and earth arts justice.
Link to our multilingual poetry journal READ: A Journal of Inter-Translation, our podcastInvitation to the Species, and our films set in Tangier, New York and beyond, here:
« En 2004-2005, Omar Berrada et Sarah Riggs, à la fois poètes, traducteur/trice et commissaires d’exposition, créent Tamaas, association artistique interculturelle attachée aux créations mêlant poésie, traduction, film, danse, éducation, environnement arts et justice.
Le lien vers notre notre revue de poésie multilingue READ : Un journal d’inter-traduction, notre podcast, Invitation to the Species (Appel aux espèces), et nos films, tournés à Tanger, New York et ailleurs, se trouve ici :
Sarah Riggs is a translator, and co-editor with Omar Berrada, of Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets (Litmus Press, Spring 2024), recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award. Copies can be ordered in the U.S. and internationally: https://asterismbooks.com/product/another-room-to-live-in-15-contemporary-arab-poets
Sarah Riggs is the co-translator with Lindsay Turner of Liliane Giraudon’s Love is Colder than the Lake (Nightboat Books, 2024) https://nightboat.org/book/love-is-colder-than-the-lake/
Sarah Riggs is the co-translator with Jérémy Robert of Olivia Elias’ Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry Books, 2023) https://worldpoetrybooks.com/book-store/p/your-name-palestine-by-olivia-elias
Sarah Riggs’ translation from the French of Etel Adnan’s TIME (Nightboat Books) won the International Griffin Poetry Award, The Best Translated Book Award, and was nominated for the PEN Translation Award and the Lambda Award, in 2020
Read and Hear Excerpts Here
Read Riggs’ Reflections on Adnan’s TIME
Purchase Riggs’ translation of Adnan’s TIME here
Liliane Giraudon, LOVE IS COLDER THAN THE LAKE (co-translated with Lindsay Turner, Nightboat Books)
Olivia Elias, Your Name, Palestine, co-translated by Sarah Riggs & Jérémy Robert ( World Poetry Books, 2023)
Riggs is also the translator or co-translator of the following books from the French.
READ ABOUT AND PURCHASE
Isabelle Garron’s FACE BEFORE AGAINST (Litmus Press)
Marie Borel, WOLFTROT (co-translated with Omar Berrada)
Ryoko Sekiguchi, TWO MARKETS, ONCE AGAIN
Oscarine Bosquet, PRESENT PARTICIPLE (co-translated Ellen LeBlond-Schrader)
TAMAAS TRANSLATION SEMINAR
With Cole Swensen and Omar Berrada, Riggs has run the ongoing annual Tamaas Translation Seminar since 2004/2005
Read an Issue in French-English of the journal here
Purchase here the French-English poetry books of the journal “READ: A Journal of Intertranslation”
For a Free PDF of the Arabic-English-French journal, or for other questions, write to contact@tamaas.org
FILM PRODUCTIONS
Sarah Riggs is the producer of Outrider (Autumn 2024) a feature documentary on and with the poet performer Anne Waldman, directed, written and filmed by Alystyre Julian, and executive produced by Martin Scorsese. https://www.outriderfilm.com/trailer
SIX LIVES (Cinepoems riffing on Virginia Woolf)
DIrected by Sarah Riggs, Filmed by Frédéric Tcheng, Choregraphy Mathilde Monnier
See the entire film on Vimeo (PASSWORD virginia)
I first conceived of Six Lives after reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse five summers in a row, and living in New York, France, and Morocco in communities of writers, artists and translators. Woolf ‘s essay « The Cinema » offers a critique of cinema as a potentially superficial medium, and I wanted to achieve the depth of her work, and of poetic thinking, precisely in the cinematic medium. We gathered a cluster of six writers, in various combinations, over a period of several years, in six locations, each time with a different Woolf text in question. What gets charted is a movement from abstract thinking and the division of the body into parts, into a poetically embodied cinema where mind and body are in synchronicity. An opening.
Four Shorts produced by Sarah Riggs with Tamaas
at the Cinématheque de Tanger, Morocco, with filmmaker-poet pairs:
Natalia Almada & Peter Gizzi
Ivan Boccara & Carla Faesler
Akram Zaatari & Liliane Giraudon
Jem Cohen & Luc Sante
Directed and Filmed by Alystyre Julian, Edited by Sarah Hagey, Produced by Sarah Riggs with Tamaas. Music by Devin Brahja Waldman, Ambrose Bye, Fast Speaking Music & More
Watch a trailer.
Poems online
Poem exchange with Celina Su in the The Brooklyn Rail
The Nerve Epistle, fall 2021 Roof Books
Responsibilities of the Champagne Flutes
Poems in Arabic, translated by Khaled Najar, for the newspaper Al-Arabi Al-Jadid
Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Free Downloadable PDF)
Manifo
Books
Autobiography of EnvelopesTélécharger
Review of The Autobiography of Envelopes
Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling
Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Free Downloadable PDF)
Waterwork
Review in JACKET of Waterwork and Chain of Minuscule Decisions
Letters Returned: Screams Sewn by Sarah Riggs and Etel Adnan
published by Belladonna 2017
Chaplets
Livres en français
Murmurations (traduit par Marie Borel et Jérémy Victor Robert) paru en 2021 chez APIC dans la série rédigée par Habib Tengour « Poèmes du Monde ».
Chaîne de décisions minuscules dans la forme d’une sensation (traduit par Stéphane Bouquet, Virginie Lalucq, Jérôme Mauche, Eric Suchère, Bénédicte Vilgrain), le bleu du ciel, 2010
Livres chez Editions de l’Attente en français
43 post-it (traduit par Françoise Valéry et Marie Borel), aux éditions de l’Attente, 2009
60 textos (traduit par Françoise Valéry), L’Attente, 2007
28 télégrammes (traduit par Françoise Valéry), L’Attente, 2006
Author Photo, Franck Pruja
J’ai conçu Six Lives après avoir lu la Promenade au phare de Virginia Woolf cinq étés de suite, en partageant ma vie entre New York, la France et le Maroc, dans des communautés d’auteur.e.s, d’artistes et de traducteurs/trices. Dans son essai, le Cinéma, Woolf propose une critique du septième art en tant que médium potentiellement superficiel. Or, je souhaitais atteindre la profondeur de son œuvre et de la pensée poétique précisément par le biais du cinéma. Nous avons donc convié un groupe de six écrivain.e.s, selon des combinaisons multiples, pendant plusieurs années, et dans six lieux singuliers, à parler ensemble d’un texte de Woolf à chaque fois différent. Ce qui se dessine là, c’est un mouvement de la pensée abstraite, et de la division du corps en séquences, qui chemine vers un cinéma incarné poétiquement, où l’esprit et le corps sont synchrones. Une ouverture.
Voir le film en intégralité sur Vimeo (Mot de passe : virginia)