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–Palestinian poet and editor of Mizna, George Abraham.

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-Sarah Aziza

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–Huda Fakhreddine

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What should a poet do in such a world? Write poems. Zbigniew Herbert, as a Warsaw adolescent, saw the only choice clearly enough when he said: "One might still offer / even to the betrayed world / a rose."To write poetry, even in the most hopeless of situations, is an act of faith-not only in poetry itself, but in the world. And who knows? Maybe someone will even read you someday, awaken to his or her own life, and live it with little more laughter and sanity, more dignity and passion.

From "War as Parable and War as Fact: Herbert and Firche"

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I am only kind to my father in poems he will never read.

I try to imagine him small the way my grandmother tells it:

patient, deerlimbed, pondering polynomials. Wanting only

a Toblerone bar for his birthday to eat alone in his room

away from the violence of exploding raindrops, pitiless Madras summer.

I wonder if he is proud of his life like I am proud

of my poems-the best we could do. In another world

I would go down the stairs to where my father is sitting alone

with his wine glass and I would tell him I'm sorry. But I am a woman

the same way my father is a man: always a little embarrassed.

Somehow it is easier to say I hated practicing piano in the morning

than it is to say I loved the way you turned the pages for me.

I cringed being woken up each morning, pulled blinds and tough light, but I loved

your warm and capable hands on my forehead brushing away the remnants of a dream.

–The Truth by Natasha Rao

Still from the film "Aftersun"

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—Excerpts from "We Are Ok In Gaza" by Atef Abu Saif, a Palestinian Writer.

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“So when people say that poetry is a luxury, it is irrelevant. A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to to say how it is.

It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

―Jeanette Winterson

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From "Taking Back Jerusalem" by Palestinian Poet, George Abraham

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Gaza, Palestine.

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By Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha.

Mosab has been kidnapped by Israeli army while he was trying to flee the Gaza strip with his family. Demand his immediate release, demand ceasefire now.

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Palestinian Writer, Maya Abu-Al Hayat.

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Palestinian Writer, Susan Abulhawa

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I have loved you as a man loves an old wound picked up in a razor fight on a street nobody remembers.

Look at him; even in the dark he touches it gently.

Larry Levis.