The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
The last stand of the soul
RUTH AYLETT recommends a remarkable collection that is collective in its grief and serious in its demand for solidarity
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
Out of Gaza – New Palestinian Poetry
Edited by Alan Morrison and Atef Alshaer, Smokestack Books, £9.99
THIS anthology of 14 Palestinian poets is worth the read for its introduction alone. Atef Alshaer, a senior lecturer at University of Westminster, edited the collection along with Alan Morrison, and they ask the obvious question: how can Palestinians write poetry in the face of the Gaza genocide? Their answer: “A duty, because it records the last stand of the soul as it stares death and destruction in the face.”
Two of the anthology poets have been murdered. Rafaat Alareer a leading Gazan poet, writer, professor, and activist, was specifically targeted in December 2023 for a sarcastic online comment about the wholly invented October 7 atrocity of “an Israeli baby burned alive in an oven.”
More from this author
A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
ANGUS REID time-travels back to times when Gay Liberation was radical and allied seamlessly to an anti-racist, anti-establishment movement
ANGUS REID speaks to historian Siphokazi Magadla about the women who fought apartheid and their impact on South African society
Similar stories
A remarkable posthumous collection of poetry and other writings is a tragic document of genocide, and a beacon of hope for a Palestinian future, says HENRY BELL
Legendary poetry publisher Smokestack Books will cease operations by the end of the year. JOHN GREEN looks back at its achievements
by Hiba Abu Nada
ANDY HEDGECOCK salutes the complete, unedited diaries of a man who arrived in Gaza as a government minister and ended, like most other Palestinians, living in a refugee camp