Middle East 4 ChangeUprising in Palestine
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Tariq Ali In December 1987, a new intifada erupted in Palestine, shaking Israel as well as the elites of the Arab world. A few weeks later, the grand old…
Your Village
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Poem by Elena Bell Once in a village that is burning because a village is always somewhere burning And if you do not look because it is not your village it…
Poetry: Say, Gaza
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Linda Backiel He is turned, slightly,just a boy, in his own home.Say, Gaza. Someone took a photographin the ruin of what washis life. Black and white. Sharp shadows….
Poetry: Mahmoud Darwish’s tribute to Edward Said
Friday, January 21, 2022
I CANNOT quite say goodbye to Edward Said, because he remains so present among us and alive in the world. He was our conscience and our ambassador to…
Chopin or Paganini, a poem
Sunday, September 5, 2021
By Majid Naficy I ask for ChopinBut Alexa plays PaganiniWith his fast violin. She does not know that I’d likeTo sit by a qanat creekAnd watch tiny fishComing…
Two Poems of Palestine by Rafeef Ziadeh
Monday, May 17, 2021
Her poem ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ – an impassioned attack on media misrepresentation of the Palestinian cause – went viral within days of its release. We teach life,…
Three poems by Osama Esber
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Osama Esber and Lisa Wadeen Osama Esber, born in Jableh, Syria in 1963, is a widely published author of poetry and short stories, as well as a major…
Poems by Mohammad Mokhtari
Saturday, February 13, 2021
Iranian writer, poet and left-wing activist, he was an active member of the Iranian Writers Association. He was murdered during the chain of extrajudicial murders of progressive intellectuals…
Three Poem by Mehrdad Fallah
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Mehrdad Fallah comes from Northern Iran. He was born in 1960 in Fashoo Poshteh – “a small village . . . five fingers away from the Caspian”, as…
The Prison Cell: poem by Mahmoud Darwish
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
It is possible…It is possible at least sometimes…It is possible especially nowTo ride a horseInside a prison cellAnd run away… It is possible for prison wallsTo disappear,For the…
Death by Stoning: Poem by Ziba Karbassi
Sunday, September 13, 2020
translated by Stephen Watts and Ziba Karbassi little morning starare you here withyour star-gaze gone?little wrenare you staying in the busheswhen you go to the skies?little silver coinare…
Poems by Forugh Farrokhzad – II
Sunday, July 26, 2020
I will greet the sun again I will greet the sun again,greet the stream that once flowed in me,the clouds that were my unfurling thoughts,the aching growth of…