“It is not enough to love, for that is one of nature’s magical acts, like rainfall and thunder. It takes you out of yourself into the other’s orbit and then you have to fend for yourself. It is not enough to love, you have to know how to love. Do you know how?”
On January 14, there will be readings held to stand shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh held around the world.
Wrapped with care.
Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh has now gone more than a year without trial in Saudi prisons on the ostensible charge that he’s been “insulting the Godly self” through his poetry “and having long hair.”
Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, of Gaza, “We are unfair to her when we search for her poems.” We are certainly unfair when we scrabble anywhere for poems, searching for aesthetic pleasure in others’ suffering. But here, poetry seems to have welled up from the need to speak, to create, to defy silence.
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on August 9, 2008: I particularly appreciate this 2002 interview Darwish gave to Raja Shehadeh: Raja Shehadeh: Do you build on the work of others? Mahmoud Darwish: Yes. […]
Librarians in thirty different countries chose their favorite books for a project called “The World Through Picture Books.” The only Arab country that’s taken up the challenge (so far) is Lebanon:
PEN American recently invited writers, including Sudanese-British novelist Leila Aboulela, to a “great book swap,” where they were to bring “just one beloved book originally written in a foreign tongue.”
From the Egypt Independent: Tarek Eltayeb’s “The Palm House” has the beginnings of a strong and important novel. For the first 160 pages, the Sudanese author’s second book goes roaring along. […]
