Ghayath Almadhoun

poet and artist

Ghayath Almadhoun (* 1979) is a Palestinian poet and artist born in Damascus to a Palestinian family displaced from Ashkelon. He left Syria in 2008 and settled in Sweden, and he currently lives between Berlin and Stockholm. His work combines themes of exile, memory, war, and displacement with personal experiences and political reflections. He is the author of five poetry collections, and his work has been translated into nearly thirty languages. In addition to writing, he also creates experimental poetry films and collaborates with artists, musicians, and scholars. His latest collection, I Have Brought You a Severed Hand (2025), has already been translated into German, Dutch, Portuguese, and Norwegian. In it, he intertwines personal loss with the history of violence, war, and displacement, drawing on surrealist imagery, irony, and dark humour. Almadhoun is considered one of the leading voices in contemporary Arabic poetry.