Renowned aphorist Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail writes alongside a catastrophe beyond words, trying to shelter in words what remains of our humanity. To be a Minister of Loneliness and Lightkeeper, tending to the light. — Philip Metres, author of Fugitive/Refuge
Palestine is personal for writer, Yahia Lababidi. His Palestinian grandmother, Rabiha Dajani — educator, activist & social worker — was forced to flee her ancestral home in Jerusalem, at gunpoint, some eighty years ago.
As an Arab-American, Lababidi feels deeply betrayed by the USA’s blind support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
In Palestine Wail, he reminds us that religion is not politics, Judaism is not Zionism, and to criticize the immoral, illegal actions of Israel is not antisemitism — especially since, as an Arab, Lababidi is a Semite, himself.
Using both poetry and prose, Lababidi reflects on how we are neither our corrupt governments, nor our compromised media. Rather, we are partners in humanity, members of one human family. Not in Our Name will the unholy massacres of innocent Palestinians be committed (two-thirds of whom are women and children) nor in the false name of ‘self-defense’.
In turn, Lababidi reminds us that starvation as a weapon of war is both cruel and criminal, as is collective punishment.
Palestine Wail invites us to bear witness to this historical humanitarian crisis, unfolding in real-time, while not allowing ourselves to be deceived, intimidated or silenced. We are made aware of the basic human truths that no lasting peace can be founded upon profound injustice and that the jailor is never Free…
Yahia Lababidi, an Arab-American writer of Palestinian background, has crafted a poignant collection which serves as a heartfelt tribute to the Palestinian people, their struggles, and their resilience in the face of an ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The collection, described as a love letter to Gaza, draws inspiration from the rich literary tradition of Palestinian resistance literature. Lababidi, known for his critically-acclaimed books of aphorisms, essays, and poetry, brings his unique voice to this personal, political and spiritual work.
Palestine Wail addresses us in a variety of voices: outrage, lamentation and pity, in attempting to honor the pain of the oppressed Palestinian people, while also celebrating their enduring spirit.
Lababidi’s Wail, ultimately, is a prayerful work seeking peace, healing and reconciliation—a testament to the transformative power of literature to keep hope alive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
These are necessary and truthful poems. Yahia Lababidi powerfully illuminates this heartbreaking time and terrible season in the history of our world. This book, like a lantern in darkness, brings to light the truth of lives we must learn to honor and remember. — James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Creativity, and Self-Compassion
Yahia Lababidi’s stunning and resonant collection, Palestine Wail, addresses the outrage felt by many of the oppressed Palestinian supporters and more. He also speaks of the lamentations of his people and the show of pity, compassion, and empathy from many members of the human family from all around the world. — The Indefatigable Longing For Peace And Rapprochement In Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail By Michael Parker.
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Yahia Lababidi, author of eleven collections of poetry and prose. His aphorisms and poems have gone viral and are used in classrooms and religious services and have been featured at international film festivals. Lababidi has also contributed to news, literary,…
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Truth be told, I never thought I would write another volume of poetry after the last, I will not Dance to Your Beat (2011). The reason was that my previous volumes were reactive to the circumstances of the times. Patriots and Cockroaches (1992) was a reaction to the socio-political corruption that had engulfed Africa and dimmed the enthusiasm that had been built by the years of struggle for independence. Whereas we thought we were stepping into a post-colonial era, what we stepped into was a vicious neo-colonial times. The next collection, Poems on the Run (1995) was a reaction to military autocracy and the repression that followed. The volume was literally written underground. This was followed by Intercepted (1998) all written while detained at Kalakuta Republic of Alagbon Close. We Thought it was Oil But it was Blood (2002) responded to two things primarily – extractivism and the accompanying human and environmental rights abuses in the Niger Delta and elsewhere. The massive erosion of biodiversity and attacks on food sovereignty through the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into our agricultural system inspired I Will not Dance to your Beat.
What you have in your hands, or on your screens, is a compilation that is largely more meditative than the previous collections. There are moments of reflection on the colonial and neoliberal foundations that permit a willful disconnection from nature and the resultant destructive extractivism.
Some of the poems came through conversations and poetry writing sessions with Peter Molnar, Maryam al-Khawaja — Rafto Human Rights laureates and Salil Tripathi, a member of the board of PEN International, in August 2017. The sessions held at a beautifully rustic location in Celleno, Italy, were documented on celluloid by the duo of Maria Galliana Dyrvik and Anita Jonsterhaug Vedå of SMAU, a multimedia firm in Norway. Poetic relationship with Maria and Anita has continued over the years and their work continues to inspire more and more poems.
These poems by Issa Shivji, lawyer, activist and Tanzanian public intellectual, were written at different times in different circumstances. They give vent to personal anguish and political anger. Mostly originally written in Kiswahili, here accompanied by English translations, and they are intensely personal and political.
Poems are clustered under several headings to provide a context. The first combines personal agony at the loss of comrades and friends with poems about love and affection for living ones. The second is about robberies of freedom, resources, and dignity and the loss of justice under neoliberalism. The third section, entitled Hopes and Fears, comprises short poems tweeted over the last five years expressing despair, fear and hope in the human capacity for freedom.
The last section are poems, concerned with Shivji’s period in South Africa in 2018, reflect on the emergence of neo-apartheid with its wanton and shameless exploitation of the majority.
Wonderfully translated by Ida Hadjivayanis.
Written with urgency out of a war-time Beirut, this poetry collection registers the griefs and the heroism of the Lebanese, under siege yet again. Sabbagh lends his lyrical voice here, to give a voice to the voiceless, trying to find some harmonic sense out of catastrophe. This book will compel readers, both Lebanese and those with any kind of human heart. While much of the work was written swiftly, on impulse, and almost like, as one of the poem’s title’s has it, a ‘War Diary,’ in verse, this work aims nonetheless to last in its significance and resonance at a time when the world as a whole (let alone Lebanon herself) has become so unpredictable, so fickle and so perilous. Night Settles Upon The City aims to be a worthwhile addition to the contemporary literature of war and, more specifically, to the literary representations of the modern Lebanese reality and experience.
Omar Sabbagh is a poet who is privileged to write about war and destruction from the relative safety of his study. But this double-edged illusion is insidious — mental and emotional inwardly, and physical for those who are directly under attack. It is visceral, political, heart-wrenching — yet the poet seeks out light and hope through the act of writing, for the sake of ownership and sharing. He may say that “I cannot read minds and nor / will I ever wish to”, but he writes for the importance of record-keeping, seeking solace, both private and public — as the Night Settles Upon The City of Beirut.
— Sudeep Sen, Winner of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize
Omar Sabbagh has long brought us a world in which personal experience stitches a hyphen between the eastern Mediterranean and the northerly British archipelago. Now he makes the tension inherent within that richness explicit, in a love-letter to his family and home city of Beirut. Written while the ‘night’ of war ‘settles upon the city’, his introductory ‘Thoughts’ show us how unthinkable war remains, even when it arrives on the doorstep. This is a book of witness to what cannot happen, and yet does.
– Fiona Sampson, Professor Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL.Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning WW Norton 2022 – Washington Post Book of the Year, New York Times Editors’ Choice, finalist Plutarch Prize, finalist PEN Jacqueline Bograd Award, Sunday Times Paperback of the year.
The poet Omar Sabbagh lives in Beirut. His voice is playful, almost surreal at times. He talks of ‘the hairbrained monocle of war’ and suggests that if you live long enough in a place like Beirut ‘laughter becomes a lover’s distance-giving kiss’. Night Settles Upon the City offers us a poetry that is neither ideological nor partisan, not of the frontline but of a deeply threatened warzone. Its terms are easy-going, sorrowful, humane, formally intelligent and tinged with apprehension. It is humanity being human. Reading it is relief and hope.’
— George Szirtes FRSL, Eliot Prize winner.
—Dr. Pamela Chrabieh, Kulturnest Co-founder & Managing Director
In Night Settles on the City, Omar Sabbagh gives voice to the bewilderment, fear, rage, and despair so many of us in the Middle East are currently feeling. His eloquent, tender poems grapple with the impossibility—yet absolute necessity—of language at a moment when words otherwise fail. Like all the best poems, Sabbagh’s challenge, soothe, haunt, and rehumanize us, ultimately arousing our better selves.
—Mai Al-Nakib, author of An Unlasting Home and The Hidden Light of Objects
Both erudite and demotic, felt through the body and ‘guided by ear’ Omar Sabbagh’s voice powers through the remote attacks on Beirut – the city in which he currently lives – the hourly atrocities and unspeakable suffering to reach us and to speak for us. ‘What’s to understand?’ he asks ‘That murder can be finessed?’ In his seminal new collection, Night Settles Upon the City, night becomes a ‘dark and violent animal’ with its ‘panther’s pelt’ of terror ‘slowly curving round us’ through which we hear the voice of the aggressor reflecting that ‘…each murderous attack/ I order seems to drain this world of innocence.’ Yet Sabbagh’s own voice remains measured, balanced, especially in the portraits he paints of his beloved father…‘It gets worse each day watching him/ ageing’ (‘The Old Man and his Walking Stick’). This poem ends with the lines ‘an old man and his son, fighting a war/ in a warzone we all must visit’. Alongside unimaginable horror we are shown the ordinary griefs and losses that we all suffer – of ageing, of failing, of being human; and it’s the humanity and compassion with which Sabbagh bears witness that will secure this book’s future among the handful of classics that will come to define our era.
— Jenny Lewis, MA Oxon., MPhil., PhD, Tutor for Poetry, Oxford University
These letters and poems are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indomitable power in humans to stay alive in the face of certain death – to stay alive even in death.
Reading through the treasure trove of the letters and poems compiled here as The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa evokes intense memories of his resolute struggles against an oil behemoth and a deaf autocratic government. His crusade frames one of the most tumultuous periods of Nigeria’s history; his tragic story evokes anger and demands action to resolve the crises that first led the Ogoni people to demand that Shell clean up Ogoni lands or clear out of the territory.
Weaving Our Stories is a Hawaii-rooted abolitionist program that utilizes storytelling as a vehicle for liberation. Our mission revolves around teaching storytelling as an act of resistance, dismantling harmful existing narratives, and nurturing our ability to weave counter-narratives that acknowledge and celebrate the inherent beauty and brilliance within our storytellers. Through our stories, we advocate for justice and liberation.
This anthology follows the trail of esteemed works such as “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color” and “Na Wahine Koa: Hawaiian Women for Sovereignty and Demilitarization.” This anthology includes poetry, essays, visual art, and narratives penned by authors and artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color from Hawaii and beyond. While our contributors span a diverse spectrum of experiences and identities, they all share a common commitment to individual and collective well-being. Our contributors astutely showcase how their expressions of resistance and liberation, whether through visual art or written text, align with one or more of the central themes of Weaving Our Stories: resistance through cultural memory, accountability, resisting false binaries, and countering hegemony.
In tandem with the community collection of stories that revolve around resistance, this anthology also highlights the remarkable achievements of our six accomplished Black youth organizers. These young individuals dedicated a year to the Weaving Our Stories Youth Series during the pandemic, delving into the power and relevance of storytelling in our journey of resistance and liberation. Each of the six youth activists provides an overview of their Community Impact Design Projects.
These culminating endeavors addressed community issues by proposing interventions that harness our resistance themes and our three Pillars of Liberation—namely, institutions, structures/methodology, and people.
This anthology offers celebrations of our triumphs, our joys, and our unwavering resilience. Simultaneously, they advocate for our ongoing resistance, insisting on justice and a sincere confrontation with the often-overlooked lived experiences that deserve acknowledgement.
Morocco, 1359. The people of Fes are living in deprivation under the rule of an unjust sultan. Zakaria is a young Muslim scholar trying to sustain his family while committing to a rigid moral code. To provide for his sickly daughter, he sacrifices his principles and seeks a job at the palace, where he gradually becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, his conscience tormented by serving the sultan. In the hope of fleeing from the constraints of his world, he joins the quest of Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the exiled king of Granada, and his enchanting sister, Aisha, to reclaim their throne. Together, they set out to Andalusia on a journey that will call into question all of Zakaria’s beliefs and change the history of the Iberian Peninsula for decades to come.
Then He Sent Prophets is a story about the suffering of young idealists in a world of inevitable compromise. Throughout his journey, Zakaria faces internal struggles that are timeless and universal, strives to reconcile his faith with the world, doubts the motives behind his desire to live morally, and ends up wondering whether a life consisting of one compromise after another is one worth living.
Then He Sent Prophets is a novel for our moment. Set around the political struggles of fourteenth-century Granada, it is a deeply sympathetic and passionately human look at how one might make—or fail to make—moral, decent choices when living in a violent, indecent world.
— Marcia Lynx Qualey, founding editor of ArabLit
Circumstances present Zakaria with a position at the palace. […] Can someone critical of the sultan and conscious of his corruption maintain integrity while serving at the palace? And what’s the line between complete innocence and partial complicity? These are the questions at the crux of his ethical dilemma. […] It’s easy to make connections between Zakaria’s inner dilemmas and those many of us grapple with today.
— Hafsa Lodi in The New Arab
As the world grapples with the legacy of crimes of enslavement, colonialism, genocide and mass killings, imprisonment and murder of children, attempts at eliminating cultures and history of Indigenous peoples, looting and other crimes against humanity, the performance of public atonement has become increasingly prevalent. Apologies from state actors and institutions are issued in solemn ceremonies, often acknowledging the collective guilt for historical atrocities. Despite the solemnity of these events, there is a growing scepticism surrounding the sincerity of these apologies, particularly when they are not accompanied by tangible reparations, healing, reconciliation or systemic change. This scepticism is rooted in a perception that these acts of contrition are sometimes less about making amends to the aggrieved and more about assuaging the guilt of the aggressors and maintaining the status quo, providing the illusion of progress without the substance.
In this compelling work, Oh, Sorry! Rituals of Forgiveness, Crises and Social Struggles in Postmodern Capitalism, the authors unveil the complex interplay between public apologies, social justice and popular mobilisations. The chapters are devoted primarily to the experiences of Latin America, particularly of Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, and Brazil. But there is also a chapter on the struggles for Palestine — so relevant in the face of the current genocidal invasion by the Zionist State of Israel into Gaza, the world’s largest and most densely populated concentration camp.
Dispossessed is a poetic representation of life in three stages through the eyes of a poet. It shows, from the thematic interests of the poet; what he considers the crucial stages in life – Innocence, Transgression and Atonement.
Innocence offers a racy view of the picture gallery of the poet’s life as a child. The sensibilities of the poet shine through the foliage of his mind as he pines for self-definition; seeking open ears for his verses. But it is also a period of apprenticeship as the poet hones his skills for the artistic long journey that is inevitable. Clothed in the innocence of childhood, he learns to talk in metaphors and search for himself in the community of imaginative people. This search lights up the path into the poet’s aesthetic mindscape and the silent questions that keep him awake. Innocence is therefore a thirst for sunlight; a quest for utterance.
The unwary reader is beckoned into the quest through poems that evoke memories of their own childhood and conscript them into the ensuing communal experience. However, the human condition abhors inertia. But for any form of natural or artistic growth to occur, the poet must lose his innocence. So, Innocence and its poems of idyllic childhood soon give way to the unexpected — Transgression. Transgression is the coming of age segment of the collection. The poet discovers love. And slowly, he finds himself taking a dip in a pool of emotion that appears to serve as the ultimate sparkplug for his songs.
In essence, Transgression eases the reader into a rare observatory; from where the poet could be seen falling in and out of love and celebrating one of the most profound experiences known to man. It must be noted that in some instances, the love poems of Transgression are also not what they seem on the surface. In some instances, the poet addresses his troubled relationship with his country through poetry; mirroring his personal frustrations and disappointment in verses that come off as a voice of disenchantment. Caught in the firm grip of emotions, the poet changes like the English weather.
But after waves of emotional whirlwinds in Transgression, the poet faces the next logical step — Atonement. Atonement presents a poet who has undergone the rites of passage and weaned himself of self-doubts. He has washed his hands clean and must settle down to a fireside dinner with the elders. But as it turns out, the poet is not only seeking the ears of his genealogical ancestors and elders; he is also seeking the counsel of serious poets, past and present whose nod he needs to take on the weighty issues of his time. So, he comes with a “fistful of kolanuts” as is customary with his people who supplicate their elders and ancestors with kolanuts. In gaining entry into this conclave of his biological and artistic ancestors, he acquires the aesthetic authority to ask weighty questions about the world around him. He is incensed by what assails his sensibilities; a world that turns a blind eye to injustice and a humanity that needs an open heart surgery.
Atonement could also be seen as the poet’s personal admission that serious poetry ought to speak to the dominant issues of the day; the anxieties and insomnia of the age. He muses about these issues; posing rhetorical questions in about them in some instances.
In the end, dispossessed is one man’s journey that finally assumes all the attributes of a communal voyage. Treading in the imagined interstices between the personal and the communal, dispossessed leads us to a clearing in the woods where our awareness of our world heightens with the turning of every page.
James Eze was born in Enugu, southeast Nigeria, shortly after the Biafran War. He was the pioneer Literary Editor of Sunday Sun. As Head of External Communications at Fidelity Bank, he worked in partnership with the novelist Chimamanda Adichie to begin her popular International Creative Writing Workshop series. He is the curator of Under African Skies which hosts A Flutter in the Woods; a yearly evening of poetry and songs in Awka, Anambra State. He also co-founded The Return to Idoto, a poetry festival in honour of Christopher Okigbo. His poems have appeared in Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria.
Richard Modiano
Yahia Lababidi’s new collection of poetry Palestine Wail offers a profound and poignant exploration of human emotions, social injustices, and the resilience of the human spirit. Lababidi weaves together themes of hope, suffering, and solidarity with a keen sensitivity that resonates deeply.— Richard Modiano https://synchchaos.com/richard-modiano-reviews-yahia-lababidis-poetry-collection-palestine-wail/
Angele Ellis
Angele Ellis: Love in a Time of Genocide | In Palestine Wail, Yahia Lababidi seeks the redemption of the human soul: Yahia Lababidi’s eleventh book draws on the spiritual and aphoristic traditions of Middle Eastern and Arab American poetry—from Rumi to Kahlil Gibran—as well as on its vein of political and social critique. This makes Lababidi’s brief free verse poems at once meditations on peace and bulletins from the battlefield.
In his introduction to this collection, Lababidi references not only the Sufi mystic Rumi and the Christian allegorist Gibran, but a range of notable writers and rebels of the past century, including Martin Luther King, Scott Peck, Leonard Cohen, and Elie Wiesel.
In a passionate afterword, Lababidi evokes the spirits of Palestinian poets Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972) and Refaat Alareer (1979-2023)—separated by a generation, yet both killed by Israeli bombs, along with members of their families. He advocates for an end to the “daily horrors” which since this past October, have deprived 2.3 million Palestinians of their homes. According to the latest figures provided by the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, and thousands more are buried under rubble and threatened by illness.
Tina Bexson
‘Palestine Wail’ by Yahia Lababidi, reviewed by Tina Bexson
Lababidi began writing Palestine Wail – in effect, a love letter to Gaza – after October 7th last year. Its introduction and afterword, both written by the author, include ample references to others; mostly poets such as Rumi and Gibran, but also writers, activists, artists, scholars, and intellectuals.
How any poet can hope to do justice to the magnitude of Gaza may seem baffling. For it is mostly beyond words. But Lababidi does, at least as far as it is possible to do so. Also by acknowledging the futility of words – especially if insincerely expressed – he deftly uses his prose and poems to explore the relentless horror, anguish, and suffering; the understandable resulting anger; and then something – however intangible – resembling trust, compassion, and hope. He warns us that if we ignore the latter – which he refers to as ‘spiritual laws’ – the repercussions will be insurmountable. Throughout Palestine Wail, he ultimately attempts to transcend ire and embrace hope, emphasising the moral duty we have towards each other.
In light of recent evidence including that from Israel’s network of torture camps and prisons, these monstrosities likely extend way beyond what has been exposed so far. Then there is the growing 95,000 injured and the 1.9 million people displaced.
Lababidi calls out the complicity of so-called democratic Western leaders in one of the world’s longest running, unresolved wars of the twenty-first century. The seeds of which in truth were partly planted by Europe – especially the British with Balfour – over a century ago – resulting in a ‘war’ that has cumulated in the genocide of all genocides.
The continued danger of this blinded complicity means that Israel will not only extend its atrocities but will never be held accountable in any way either.
By far one of the worst genocides of the twenty-first century, Gaza will go down in history for generations to come, just as the Holocaust did. And does. And along with its silence and complicity, not dissimilar to that of Nazi Germany.
Israel is now seen to be exploiting its war on Gaza to justify actions against Palestinians and to expand control over Gaza and the West Bank.
I await further work from Yahia Lababidi.
Amanda Holmes Duffy
Poetry is also song in language. And what is song if not harmony in which we might find healing? Writing from the Palestinian diaspora, Yahia Lababidi, an Egyptian American of Palestinian descent, dedicates Palestine Wail (Daraja Press) to his grandmother, Rabiha Dajani. “Forced to flee her ancestral home in Palestine at gunpoint nearly 80 years ago,” he writes, “she went on to become a remarkable educator, activist, and social worker.”
The collection’s opening section, “Unbearable Casualties,” is angry, confused, and conflicted. You feel the poet trying to write himself sane (his phrase to me in a recent communication). Perhaps some of these poems hatched a little early, but the subsequent sections, “Lingering at the Threshold” and “On a Far Shore,” are marked by spiritual and philosophical yearning. For him, during Ramadan:
To fast is to slow down
Almost to a stillness
And distill what is necessary:
Sacrifice, patience, obedience
— In other words, radical gratitude.
He also reaches for wise humor in such poems as “Minister of Loneliness,” which is an actual position recently formed by the U.K. government. He writes:
Successful candidates must be virtuosos of suffering
sensitive, of course, yet impervious to lingering sadness
tirelessly capable of encouraging others despite,
at times, feeling defeated or assaulted by pointlessness
Lababidi continually endeavors to tend the light during times of darkness. To breathe in his poems is to embark on a journey from a heartfelt wail of sorrow and despair into silent prayer.
—Amanda Holmes Duffy https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/on-poetry-september-2024
James Crews
The collection, described as a love letter to Gaza, draws inspiration from the rich literary tradition of Palestinian resistance literature. Lababidi, known for his critically-acclaimed books of aphorisms, essays, and poetry, brings his unique voice to this personal, political and spiritual work.
Palestine Wail addresses us in a variety of voices: outrage, lamentation and pity, in attempting to honor the pain of the oppressed Palestinian people, while also celebrating their enduring spirit.
Lababidi’s Wail, ultimately, is a prayerful work seeking peace, healing and reconciliation—a testament to the transformative power of literature to keep hope alive in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
These are necessary and truthful poems. Yahia Lababidi powerfully illuminates this heartbreaking time and terrible season in the history of our world. This book, like a lantern in darkness, brings to light the truth of lives we must learn to honor and remember. — James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Creativity, and Self-Compassion
Michael Parker
Yahia Lababidi’s stunning and resonant collection, Palestine Wail, addresses the outrage felt by many of the oppressed Palestinian supporters and more. He also speaks of the lamentations of his people and the show of pity, compassion, and empathy from many members of the human family from all around the world. — The Indefatigable Longing For Peace And Rapprochement In Yahia Lababidi’s Palestine Wail By Michael Parker.
Shohreh Laici
Yahia Lababidi’s poems conjure a seemingly impossible future in the Middle East that readers can imagine now. He shows a kind of world that can only exist if there is freedom of expression in the first place. … Lababidi attempts to build a language in Palestine Wail that challenges the dominant lexicon about Gaza and Israel. He is protecting language—the ability to call things what they are—and in doing so, he is protecting humanity. … Because of his struggle to get Palestine Wail even published, Lababidi’s poetry, and its cry for peace, took on new meaning for me—about the ability to speak openly, to express yourself freely. A poet’s identity is to use words to create new language. A poet’s responsibility is to create language that challenges institutions of power and revolts against the domineering narratives in society, especially when they try to restrict any alternative. When a publisher like the one who dropped Lababidi’s book threatens words themselves, free expression itself is threatened.— Shohreh Laici https://dawnmena.org/on-yahia-lababidis-palestine-wail-and-the-poetry-of-free-expression/
Jewish Voice for Labour
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/a-poetic-love-letter-to-gaza-a-belief-in-hope/
Palestinian poets have long been – and remain – important within the struggle for justice. Yahia Lababidi has published many collections of poetry an d prose and we commend his latest. Below we also publish an interview with the publisher of his latest work. But take it perhaps from Ken Loach who says of “Palestine Wail”: ‘In their simplicity and poignancy these poems are immensely touching. They show that Palestinians, like all of us, find solace from the eternal rhythms of the natural world. And this at a time when they struggle to survive in the midst of the horrors and cruelty inflicted on them by Israel and their powerful supporters. Please read Yahia Lababidi’s poems, and share his glimpse of hope in the darkest of times.’ Yahia Lababidi cannot help but be political and he, like so many who speak out, has faced censorship; in an interview with PEN America when asked about experience of censorship he said: “In a two hour Zoom meeting, the publisher let me know that they were uneasy with my use of words like Genocide, even murder — as they felt that it was “prejudging a legal matter” — and they went so far as to suggest that if they were to publish my book, it would result in scandal for them and some of their authors would walk out.” (his complete answer to the question and link to the interview is at the end of this post, Ed.)
Ken Loach
‘In their simplicity and poignancy these poems are immensely touching. They show that Palestinians, like all of us, find solace from the eternal rhythms of the natural world. And this at a time when they struggle to survive in the midst of the horrors and cruelty inflicted on them by Israel and their powerful supporters. Please read Yahia Lababidi’s poems, and share his glimpse of hope in the darkest of times.’
Rebecca Romani
Lababidi links Gaza clearly to other genocides, passing through Elie Wiesel to the memories of genocide at the hands of the American government for the Lakota and Dakota Sioux at Standing Rock. It is these genocides as well as the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century, which formed the backbone of the Final Solution and now find their echo in the events in Gaza.
Lababidi invokes other writers, other voices such as the Persian poet Rumi and the Lebanese writer, Khalil Gibran to lend fullness to his grief. But Lababidi also uses this opening essay to encourage the reader to be open to the thought that wounded people (those acted against), often turn that violence on others and to reflect that our modern societies are often wounded both by what was done to us and what we have done in return.
[…]
Flowers, trees, birds, music, and sunshine, break through the fog of despair that lingers over the collection. It is no accident that Lababidi invokes nature, almost like a major component of hope and healing. The garden, a collaboration with nature, is stronger than the urbicide – the murder of urban centers. Olive trees that have stood for centuries, flowers that bloom every season recall the beauty and magic of Islamic gardens which themselves serve as invocations of Paradise.
—Rebecca Romani https://www.palestinechronicle.com/to-mourn-is-to-be-human-a-review-of-palestinian-wail-by-yahia-lababidi/
Soha Hesham
This poignant collection in Palestine Wail is a blend of poetry and prose in which Lababidi underscores a crucial distinction between religion and politics, and Judaism that should not be confused with Zionism, articulating how people are not defined by their governments or the biased narratives of the media. The collection delves deeply into the humanitarian crisis that’s been going on for more than a year in Gaza and is a call for people to speak out against lies and silence. Lababidi captures the struggle of the Palestinian people as well as their exceptional resilience. — Soha Hesham, https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/536781.aspx
Narendra Pachkede
In just under 100 pages, Lababidi weaves grief, rage, and compassion into a tapestry of moral clarity, forcing readers to confront the cost of indifference. If his words are not heeded, Gaza will indeed stand as a testament to one of the most egregious genocides of the century, its suffering echoing across generations—much like the Holocaust, with silence and complicity damning us all over again.— Narendra Pachkede, https://timesheadline.in/en/2024/12/31/peace-lily/