Personal Info
- Country of residence: Honduras
Information
Honduran poet Rolando Kattan's roots go back to Bethlehem, Palestine. He is the third generation of his family to move to Honduras in 1910. His grandfather, Afif Kattan, cried twice, according to the poet's uncle: once when he saw barefoot Honduran soldiers in a civil war, and the second time during the "Nakba" of May 15, 1948, when Palestine fell under Israeli occupation.
Rolando, born in Tegucigalpa in 1979, is a winged poet who loves traveling, libraries, and old books. He also seeks the solitude of contemplation, which is why he doesn't let television enter his home, nor does he have a social media account, according to an interview with Palestinian writer and translator Ghadeer Abusneineh, who lives in Nicaragua. The poet has never been cut off from his Palestinian roots, and says that "everyone around him always brings him back to his roots: memories of the journey, the circumstances in which the family emigrated, the deceased grandparents, and beyond." He has published four poetry collections, the first of which he wrote when he was 20. Bassem Al-Mar'abi, a poet living in Sweden, describes him as "a poet obsessed with poetry and literature since his childhood." In his poem "Three Images of Existing Love," translated from the Spanish by Ghadeer Abusneineh, Rolando Kattan says:
“I return to 1998/ To the city they used to see us pass through/ And I find holes instead of streets/ Dust instead of houses/ In the city/ Where they used to see us pass in amazement/ No one can change the past/ But whoever experiences my death/ Will destroy the city I roamed through with you.”
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