REVIEW

Out of Gaza: New Palestinian Poetry

September 30, 2024 

Book Author(s):Alan Morrison, Atef Alshaer
Book Editor(s):Alan Morrison, Atef Alshaer
Published Date:March 2024
Publisher:Palestine Book Awards 2019
Paperback:72 pages
ISBN-13:978-1739473457

by Muhammad Hussein

When an Israeli air strike killed the prominent Palestinian writer and scholar Refaat Alareer in Gaza back in December, it signalled not only the random and wanton destruction of an area in Gaza City, but also the deliberate targeting of the man known as a leader of a new generation of writers and poets in the besieged enclave.

His killing was further evidence of the Israeli occupation regime’s campaign to assassinate Gaza’s Palestinian intelligentsia and academic class. This stemmed from the belief that with the killing of such figures would come the gradual decline of literary development and the articulation of revolutionary thought, leaving the oppressed people with the natural desire for liberation but without intellectual guidance and support.

Thus, does the role of poetry reveal itself in the significance of human consciousness, manifesting not only in concepts such as romance or longing, but in the very spiritual need for self-determination and dignity.

Atef Alshaer, the editor of Out of Gaza: New Palestinian Poetry, writes in his introduction to the book that, while “Guns, bombs, rockets, and other tools of killing and destruction are deafening methods of silencing and robbing people of their humanity,” poetry is the “poor companion of the oppressed and anybody with a living soul” which serves as “a humanising force, a repository of meaning and remembrance to lives lost and landscapes destroyed.”

Read the full review at the PBA website here