4 Books Featuring Palestinian Poets to Diversify Your Bookshelf

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This issue of book recommendations was curated by

I. S. Bashirah

, the author of khayāl | imagination, and member of The UNSPOKEN Collective She is a multi-award-winning poet and an alumna of the University of Waterloo. Selected works include “my grandma, so clean” and “What Will People Say?” If you enjoy this post, be sure to subscribe to her newsletter.

Hello everyone,

Like many of you I’ve been following Periphery for months, and I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to contribute to this publication! I’ve been working diligently to curate this post for Periphery over the past few weeks to highlight some of my favorite works by writers with Palestinian ancestry. Some of these are writers that I’ve already had on my bookshelf for years, and I hope that you agree with my observations on their powerful messages and high degree of literary quality. I am not Palestinian, but I have always admired many Palestinian poets for their talent, bravery, and innovation.

Before we get into the reading recommendations, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the situation in Gaza. One organization doing important work to highlight the present situation in Gaza is Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG). The WAWOG website states:

“As writers (and artists, and teachers, and more), we know that speech can both inform and take the form of action; that struggles for liberation can and must be advanced on discursive terrains; that old oppressive narratives must crumble as new consciousnesses grow. Armed with words, we will keep fighting the narrative war.”

To learn more about WAWOG, and the important work that they’re doing, you can take a look at their website here.

Nonfiction

Palestine as Metaphor by Mahmoud Darwish (2019). Mahmoud Darwish was an award-winning writer who passed away in 2008. He has been widely regarded as one of Palestine’s most famous writers. He was born in the Palestinian village al-Birwa, which was unfortunately destroyed during his lifetime. This text is a collection of five interviews that Darwish participated in that were previously unavailable in English translation. These interviews provide meaningful insight into who Darwish was, as well as his approach to the craft of writing.

“Palestine as metaphor means that the poet recreates Palestine through poetry. He immortalizes it by reviving its history, preserving its past, and transmuting its present. In this sense, poetry is not simulation but alchemy and transformation, realized through language, in this instance the Arabic language in which Darwish wrote. His poetry brings about Palestine, and immortalizes it.” (quote from page xv of Palestine as Metaphor)

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Unarcheology: Anticolonial Aesthetics and Putting Things Back in the Ground by Palestinian-American writer Fargo Tbakhi was published as a chapter of a text titled Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage (2023). I found this chapter to be an eye-opening and essential read for both writers and readers of fictional and non-fictional depictions of works outside of our own direct lived experiences.

On page 180 of the text, Tbakhi describes what he calls the “archeological imperative” as,

“... a colonialist epistemological framework that shapes the way we tell stories about the past (and thus necessarily about the present and future), pressuring our narration to fit neatly within the paradigms of dominant power structures. We can understand archeology itself as a form of storytelling, which sorts the world into hierarchies of imperial meaning. These stories are ones it’s all too easy to find ourselves retelling in our own creative work. Recognizing this pressure in my own work, I wondered: How can we avoid becoming archeologists of our own dead, or of someone else’s?”

I read this chapter for the first time months ago, and I revisit it as I continue to reflect on how I can avoid becoming an archeologist in the sense that Tbakhi describes here. I have made it a habit to interrogate how I might ensure that my work is both accurate and respectful to those whom I choose to write about. If you’re interested in reading more of my key takeaways from this chapter, and how you might apply these learnings, please check out the section on “On Respecting Your Sources” in my post on found poetry.

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Poetry

Birthright by Palestinian American poet George Abraham (2020). Birthright is an award-winning poetry collection that I feel deserves much more attention than it has already received. The first time I read the poem “ars poetica in which every pronoun is a Free Palestine,” my preconceived notions of what poetry could be were completely shattered, and replaced instead with awe for the innovative form and storytelling techniques that Abraham uses to express ideas that must be difficult to sit with, let alone articulate. These are poems that can demand their readers’ full attention, and teach writers about what it means to be a contemporary poet.

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A River Dies of Thirst by Mahmoud Darwish (2009). A quote from this collection that is still with me, is one that appears on the back flap of my paperback copy: “Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance.”

Many of the themes touched on in the poetry and prose that comprise this collection are still unfortunately relevant to the experiences of Palestinians today. In “Green flies,” Darwish writes,

“The call to prayer rises to accompany the indistinguishable funerals: coffins hastily raised in the air, hastily buried – no time to carry out the rites, more dead are arriving at speed from other raids, individually or in groups, or a whole family with no orphans or grieving parents left behind.”

You can read the rest of “Green flies” here.

Within this translation, I found many individual lines that were quite strong, and I spent extra time learning from these. I envy those who can read this text in its original Arabic as I can see how well written it is and know I must be missing out on a lot of what makes it great.

For writers looking to teach themselves the craft of writing, this text can also be a great resource with all of the references it makes to other significant works of literature and historical figures, ranging from the Muʻallaqāt to the Roman emperor Nero. Taking time to read up on these references as you come across them can help guide your self-study in literature and world history.

Selected Poems for Further Reading

Interactive :: House Saints by Hala Alyan

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying by Noor Hindi

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha

War Machines Dress Up as Drag Queens by Mohammed El-Kurd

Jerusalem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Thank you,

I. S. Bashirah

for introducing us to Palestinian literature! Be sure to check out her publication at khayāl | imagination.

What stories of resistance and liberation have resonated with you the most? Please let us know in the comments below.