Not Everything is Lost.
Poetry, Palestine, and that group poem you wrote last weekend
Kim’s blog over the last sixteen days has shown us that poetry – like all art - has the power to change the world. It requires us to notice, and feel, the world around us and inside us. It asks us to care about each other - to see and experience the urgent need for change, to believe in its possibility. To hold the fact that the world is beautiful and terrible at the same time.
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from Palestine A-Z, by Mosub Abu Toha
A poem is not just words placed on a line. It’s a cloth. Mahmoud Darwish wanted to build his home, his exile, from all the words in the world. I weave my poems with my veins. I want to build a poem like a solid home, but hopefully not with my bones.
On July 23, 2014, a friend called and said, “Ezzat was killed.” I asked which Ezzat. “Ezzat, your friend.” My phone slipped from my hand, and I began to run, not knowing where.
What’s your name? Mosab. Where are you from? Palestine. What’s your mother tongue? Arabic, but she’s sick. What’s the color of your skin? There is not enough light to help me see.
We can mobilise people through hope and love, and through sadness, anger and fear. Art holds all of the m
On Sunday, I read poetry at “Songs for the Grieving, Poems for Peace” – a gathering of Calderdale folk to express solidarity for Palestine, and to raise money for grassroots projects. For far too long I've avoided the news from Palestine, skipped over adverts from charities pleading for money. Yesterday, instead, I listened to Mohammed, who left Gaza City after the invasion, and I heard from the women of the Battir collective, who joined us via a live Zoom link. The connection was poor, and translation was difficult, and there were children shouting and playing in the background in Battir and in Todmorden. The women looked tired, and sad, and cold – and strong. And they smiled and laughed, and talked about their beautiful UNSECO-listed village, and its aubergines, and they shared pictures of the marmalade they make with oranges from Jaffa, and Mohammed told us about Kill Zones, and the death of his friend, and the grassroots projects he is fuelling with his grief.
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When I was wounded in January 2009, I was 16. I was taken to hospital and x-rayed for the first time. There were two pieces of shrapnel in my body. One in my neck, another in my forehead. Seven months later, I had my first surgery to remove them. I was still a child.
For Christmas, a friend gave the kids a xylophone. It had one wooden row. The bars were of different lengths and colors, red, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white. The kids showed it to their grandparents back in Gaza, whose eyes danced while the kids smiled.
For those of us who have never lived in a war zone, it's almost impossible to imagine life in Palestine. But we have all experienced fear, and grief; we've all experienced hunger, cold, pain. Perhaps we can start there. Perhaps less predictable are the smiles, and the children and the marmalade, and how the women from Battir stayed online to listen to poetry in English, and to hear Sonya singing about comets and love.
A Rose Shoulders Up
(by Mosub Abu Toha)
Don’t ever be surprised
to see a rose shoulder up
among the ruins of the house:
This is how we survived.
As I planned my short reading, I thought of Naomi Shihab-Nye’s Gate A4, with its story of human kindness in unlikely circumstances - And how those small but significant acts can stand their ground against what sometimes feels like a deluge of horror and despair. “This is the world I want to live in. The shared world” - and so it felt appropriate to create a shared reading, matching every poem that I read with Mosub’s, and finishing with a group poem created in the hours before the event. On Facebook and the sub stack, and in conversation with members of the audience over cake, I asked people to offer their own examples of acts of community and resilience in response to the last lines of “Gate A4” –This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. Here it is for you.
NOT EVERYTHING IS LOST
after Naomi Shihab-Nye
A group poem created on 8th December 2024 by Rachel, Sam, Awen, Anne, Ripa, Alex, Charlie, Maggie, Vivienne, Frank, Debs, Silva, Miranda and others.
Not everything is lost. Not hope,
no matter how impossible. Not while wildflowers grow
from piles of rubble. People still give their blood
and nurses hand out biscuits and say thank you.
Everyone pulls together after floods
and a student chef in Todmorden
cooks a three-course meal for a family in need.
Not everything is lost. A man blinks
outside a Syrian jail, forty years lost,
released by rebels into unshackled light.
There are shelves of bread and fruit for the taking
outside the town hall, a clean smell after rain.
While M cooks free food for the Traneere estate,
not everything is lost – not the seventh life
of that cat in the rubble, not you and I walking,
nor that stone wall of lichen
holding on in the face of the storm.
Not while you remember his hand on your arm,
or the cup of tea brought by a stranger
on a hospital ward in Leeds, or
three hundred servings of free Christmas dinner,
two sittings. Not tomorrow,
nor the station guard clearing a way.
The mother's voice in the child's heart
and the dreams of swallows lifting trees.
Young people speak up in brave spaces.
The stars will light the way. Hope is green.
A pair of gloves you dropped on a cold day
is handed back, and friend collects you
from a snowy station. People of Calderdale gather
and the women of Battir tells us they are proud.
Not everything is lost, despite the pain -
not whilst they smile. Not whilst Sonya is singing,
and Laila cooks meals for a hundred in the camp.
Not love, however improbable.
The river swells, it swallows the land,
yet the robin in the willow sings on, insistent.
Not everything is lost, not us,
not the tiny shine of yourself within yourself.
Not people holding hands.
Amplify Gaza Stories supports grass-roots initiatives based in the Gaza Strip – projects such as community kitchens, run by Palestinians for Palestinians, upholding the belief that smaller community projects are necessary to complement wider organisational initiatives, and to support the people of Gaza in a way that respects the principles of dignity, strength, solidarity and Palestinian agency. You can donate here:
https://chuffed.org/project/105740-community-resilience-projects-in-gaza-supporting-multiple-projects
You can also support the Battir Women’s Co-operative via this link:
https://chuffed.org/project/104761-support-the-battir-womens-co-operative