The world is burning, and the smoke is the only proof we need. Over 18,000 Palestinians have been killed, “collateral damage” in the ongoing war, and over 1.5 million Gaza residents have been displaced from their homes. In Sudan, the civil war has led to massive ethnic cleansing. As of April 2023, more than 18,800 people have died in the civil war. And half of the population, 25 million people, are in urgent need of humanitarian aid and protection.
We have witnessed apocalyptic scenes in recent months: Palestinians starved to death and helpless children, women and men who had no place to flee were indiscriminately bombed. Their bodies burned to ashes, while schools and hospitals were destroyed and became a graveyard of rubble.
Dealing with grief and suffering on this scale is an agonizing experience, but poetry can offer us space for reflection, healing and activism. In Mahmoud Darwish’s words, “Every beautiful poetry is an act of resistance” and “Language is the most powerful weapon against oppression.”
“In silence we become accomplices,” repeats Darwish, and so in the following collections the authors have chosen to defiantly rebel in the face of oppression and persecution and to fight against tyranny. Each collection is a cry of indignation and a call for peace, justice and liberation:
Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. by Noor Hindi
The Palestinian-American poet and journalist Hindi asks: “Can we define this as a collective trauma? a. Whose trauma? b. A collection of corpses could be called a circus // and a cemetery for others.” In many places in the collection, Hindi communicates as someone who has witnessed the cruelest forms of oppression firsthand. The collection is convincing in its urgency and its burning, honest and uncompromising rebellion in the face of decades of persecution of the Palestinians. Hindi wants to spur us to rebel against oppression and show us that writing can be a medium to start a revolution.
Dark Testament: Blackout Poems by Crystal Simone Smith
In her book, Smith focuses on black Americans who have suffered from the poison of racism: from Oscar Grant, the loving father, to Tamir Rice, the lanky, lovable son, to Breonna Taylor, the decorated first responder. Dark Testament is an interactive text, and she asks the reader to engage with the redacted spaces on the page to pause and reflect: “Silence is often an act by which the living pledge to be worthy of the dead.” The collection aches with the sensitivity of what it means to be human in a dying, burning world. Smith questions the value of a life and the commonality with which we treat genocide like an everyday accident. Smith mourns a massacre of people with families, hopes, and dreams: “Each of them was once dear to someone.” She tasks the reader with the task of lighting a flame of conscience to honor those killed by violence, and carrying that torch into a brighter, more just future.
Footnotes in order of disappearance by Fady Joudah
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American doctor, poet and translator. His collection Footnotes in order of disappearancecaptivates readers with its lyrical allegory and unsparing examination of the violence and terror of Israeli and American occupation. The collection’s most poignant line is the reminder that “we have been granted the right to exist.” Joudah’s language serves as an anatomical study of what unites us and what divides us, examining in footnotes the consequences of war. The collection is an archaeology of the fossils of a dystopian world. In the title poem, he writes, “I call finding certain things loss.” Expressing anger and grief with an attention to the body and language, Joudah mixes magic, science, and skepticism to tame the machinery of the heart.
Blood fresh by Ebony Stewart
In this book, Stewart rebels against stereotypes, against objectification, against -isms, against cages. She refuses to be tamed. She refuses to have her freedom restricted. And so she rages, rabid, with sharp teeth. Here is a book of unfathomable intensity, triumphing in its colloquial language to create a voice that exudes fearless confidence and is wickedly unabashed about remaining uncensored. Ebony writes, “Break the patterns / write on tattered paper / don’t get complacent in the Holocaust.”
Black film by Danez Smith
Danez begins the collection by saying, “In the film, the townspeople call themselves fairytale princes and line up to awaken the sleeping beauty.” The collection challenges white supremacy and societal prejudices against black bodies, drawing attention to the epidemic of police brutality against black Americans. Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, Brandon Zachary, and many others who have fallen victim to this oppression are mourned, pitied, and fought for vengeance, demanding the justice they deserve so that the dead can receive a fitting elegy. This collection is half elegy, half protest. Danez fantasizes about a world where her people are safe, free, and alive, or in her words, “a safe house / made of oxtails and pork rinds / a place where you can be black and not dead.”
When they come to get us by Fatimah Asghar
Written from a formalist perspective, this collection of poems is filled with grief and loss, and begins with a history lesson on the partition of India and Pakistan. Asghar questions the borders created by colonial powers, exploring how countries, identities, and citizenships can shift and change overnight: “You’re Kashmiri until they burn your house down. Take your orchards. Raise a different flag.” They examine the many ways in which violence manifests itself, and ask what it means to be safe as a Pakistani Muslim in post-9/11 America: “…you’re Muslim until it’s too dangerous. You’re safe until you’re alone. You’re American until the towers fall. Until you have a border behind you.” When they come to get us is an education about the harsh realities of the world: an education about the trauma of ancestors, about the loss of home, about life as an orphan.
Things you might find hidden in my ear by Mosab Abu Toha
Abu Toha’s poetry thrives on a psychic connection between poetry and politics, where verse is a weapon of resistance. In the company of a new generation of Palestinian poets, Abu Toha’s poems are a testament to the hardship and resilience of the Palestinian people. Abu Toha, a native of Gaza, writes of life in an open-air prison under constant surveillance, where the ever-present threat of destruction and attack is ever-present: “The hum of the drone, / the roar of an F-16, / the screech of bombs falling on houses, / on fields and bodies, / of missiles flying away – / I free my little ear canal of them all.”
On November 19, 2023, Abu Toha was arrested by the Israel Defense Forces on suspicion of “terrorism” while attempting to flee Gaza with his wife and children. Two days later, Abu Toha was released, but not without injuries from his time in custody. He writes: “In Gaza, you don’t know what you are guilty of. It feels like living in a Kafka novel.”
