Nouri Al-Jarrah was born in Damascus in 1956. He attracted attention with his debut collection, The Boy (Beirut, 1982), and has become an influential poetic voice on the Arab literary scene. Since 1986 he has lived in London, with 16 further collections, and founding and editing a number of Arabic literary magazines. His poetry draws on diverse cultural sources, with a special focus on mythology, folk tales and legends. A Boat to Lesbos and other Poems (Banipal Books, 2018) was his first English translation, joining the Arabic with editions in French, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, Greek, Farsi.

Catherine Cobham taught Arabic language and literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, for many years, and has translated works of a number of Arab writers, including poetry by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun and Tammam Hunaidy, and novels and short stories by Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Hanan al-Shaykh and Fuad al-Takarli.