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Poetry may not be the best response to airstrikes, but for many Palestinians it has been a line of defense amid the constant destruction and carnage in Gaza.
“Poetry keeps hope alive. Even in the most difficult times, Palestinian poetry continues to think about the future,” said Nazmi al-Masri, a professor of languages at the Islamic University. Gazahe says at an online poetry event hosted by his students.
“Poetry gives people a language to express grief together,” he says. “In Gaza, poetry records what cameras can’t always reach and what numbers can’t express. When destruction wipes out space, poetry becomes a testament to history.”
A reading of student work was held to celebrate the publication of Bending the Riverpoet Alison Phipps – who is also professor of languages and social studies at the University of Glasgow – along with her Zimbabwean colleague Tawona Sithole.
“Poetry is the language of the parents Palestine. It’s a technical process that they move to,” said Phipps, who for 17 years has been involved in cultural programs with the Islamic University of Gaza.
With 95% of the buildings of the University of Gaza damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombs, all classes are online during the precious time when there is enough solar energy to create a short online video conference or, in this case, to read poetry from different parts of Gaza through phones, laptops and consoles.
Since the start of the war, 72 university faculty members and 543 students have been killed. At the same time, 2,860 students graduated.
“Palestinian poetry has a long and well-known tradition of homeland, exile, memory, resistance, love, identity, migration and survival,” says Masri. “They often combine musical beauty with political and human testimony, especially in response to migration and war.”
Some of the students’ poems are dedicated to the memory of their teacher, a Gazan poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed on an Israeli plane on December 6, 2023 along with his brother, nephew, sister and three children. Masri feels that the students are answering the call of one of Alareer’s famous poems, where he says: “When I die / you must live / to tell my story … let it bring hope / be a legend.”
Masri said: “Alareer’s poem traveled all over the world because it expresses a simple yet powerful concept: the fear of disappearing without being remembered.”
At the end of the reading, one of the students said: “Let’s get rid of war.” It became the subject of a collection of their poems, published by Wild Goose Publicationssymbol of the Christian group of churches on the island of Iona in Scotland.
As Phipps and Masri write in their introduction: “These are not poems written in quiet rooms, written under falling ceilings, dropped on phones with dying batteries, memorized because paper cannot exist.”
Phipps says: “We wrote Folding a River to accompany academic research on migration and gender violence…
“In Islam, some forms of art are not part of the traditional language so poetry, writing and decoration – but obviously – are forms that you can find in Islamic countries,” he says.
“In areas where people are not allowed to do any kind of work, you find that they are turning to more advanced techniques like henna tattooing.”
He says he found that young people in Gaza wanted to write like great Palestinian poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Dead Touchso Wild Goose asked them to submit their work for publication.
Given the terrible suffering that has been inflicted on Gaza and the Palestinian people, these poems are remarkable for their lack of bitterness or anger.
Phipps, who has helped bring students from Gaza to study in Glasgow, says he believes young poets don’t want to show or be the violence they hate. “For my students from Gaza, to live is to resist,” he says.
In the words of a Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha: “We carry our houses in our hearts after the walls are gone.”
Words from the poem Let’s Lose the War
Holding on to life
Like resistance,
Carrying the story
Of those who left us,
Whose souls remain carved
You are staying quiet in this place.
Aya Ashraf Elsourani
from Survivor’s Guilt
They rob you of your sleep, they destroy your peace;
Their mistakes are crying out loud, stop!
They burn your country, that’s free dancing
Above your pain is your future.
But my voice is still heard at night.
I hit, I fall, I get up, I write.
Hanan Jalal al-Kafarna
from Defiant Darkness
We are not asking for help.
We ask for respect.
We are asking for freedom.
We ask for protection.
We demand freedom of education,
teaching,
to speak in our name,
writing ourselves into existence.
Manar al-Houbi
from Give Me a Break
Between us, the sky will not fall.
Even the roofs of the houses have already collapsed.
we will build the horizon from the fragments of the clouds;
and teach the wind to carry our names forward.
We will not count losses.
We will read rivers that refuse to dry up;
hot stones,
the children who draw the sun from the damaged walls.
Shahd Alnaouq
from Be My Brother
