Poetry of Palestine
Taking a break from the ongoing politics and drama of the occupation, we’re going to shift gears and focus a bit on Palestinian literature and the arts - an often overlooked aspect of a region and a people. Reflecting on the media portrayal of Palestinians, the usual image proferred is of a demeaned, angry, aggressive society. The extremes of this caricature is of course the suicide bomber - but the more subtle renderings depict a classless, lawless, cultureless population.
In an effort to re-paint this distorted image of Palestinian culture fueled by the media, over coming weeks bruised earth will profile intellectuals, artists, writers and communities that challenge the popular notions prevalent in the West.
The famous Zionist edict of “a land without a people for a people without a land” is being recycled day after day with the ongoing denial of Palestinian culture and the arts. After all, denying a people’s culture is the first step in dehumanizing and dispossessing a population. Occupation is far more than barriers and fences and walls.
With that, today’s bruised earth profile focuses on the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Born in British Mandate Palestine in 1941, Darwish is perhaps the most celebrated Palestinian poet alive today - with over 30 volumes of poetry and 9 works of prose to his oeuvre. A one-time member of the PLO Executive Committee, Darwish resides in Ramallah (a town fluent with the modern Palestinian arts scene) and has lived in Beirut (during the Israelis invasion of 1982) and Cairo.
A voice of modern Palestine and one of the greatest Arab poets of the century, Darwish’s voice is urgent, engaging, and razor-sharp - having been best described by the poet Fiona Sampson as:
This most public of Palestinians is the master not of reductive polemic but of a profoundly lyric imagination, one that draws together the textures of daily life, physical beauty - whether of landscape or of women - longing, myth and history.
A few excerpts of his poetry can be found here. And to help get a sense for his range and his structure, a few special clips are reproduced below:
Whenever I search for myself I find the others
And when I search for them
I only find my alien self
So am I the individual- crowd?
-from Mural
Stripped of my name and identity?
On soil I nourished with my own hands?
Today Job cried out
Filling the sky:
Don’t make and example of me again!
Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,
Don’t ask the trees for their names
Don’t ask the valleys who their mother is
From my forehead bursts the sward of light
And from my hand springs the water of the river
All the hearts of the people are my identity
So take away my passport!
- from Passport
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