Taha Muhammad Ali in Ann Arbor

The poet Taha Muhammad Ali will be on the U of Michigan campus tomorrow for a roundtable (2-3, Hopwood Room), and a reading at 5 at the Rackham Ampitheater, 915 E. Washington.

About Ali, from his publisher's website:

Taha Muhammad Ali is a self-taught wonder, a man who sold souvenirs during the day and who, at night, studied classical Arabic texts, American fiction, English Romantic poets, Chekov, and Maupassant. Born in Saffuryia, the Galilean village at the heart of his poems, Taha and his family escaped to Lebanon during the Arab-Israeli War. He returned a year later to live in Nazareth, one painful mile away from the ruins of his former village.
A relative latecomer to poetry, Muhammad Ali has published short stories since the 1950s in Arabic and Hebrew publications. Now, having presented his poetry at the Jerusalem International Poetry Festival, the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival, and at

colleges and universities across the United States, Taha Muhammad Ali is a beloved Palestinian poet. Audiences around the world have been powerfully moved by Muhammad Ali’s poems of political complexity, bittersweet humor, and—above all—humanity. Muhammad Ali has turned over the management of his souvenir shop, near the Church of the Annunciation, to his sons and spends his days writing, traveling, and conversing with friends over Turkish coffee.