THE title poem of Farid Bitar’s Screaming Olives (Smokestack, £8.99) is about the million Palestinian olive trees cut down by the Israeli authorities and settlers since 1967 in order to ruin the Palestinian economy and uproot Palestinian culture.

These are poems about a country that no longer exists but refuses to die. They are about occupation, resistance and resilience and are a demand for the right of return for the five million Palestinians living in exile.

Bitar — who has lived in exile for 40 years — connects the story of his “stolen homeland” to stories of oppression and injustice everywhere: “Emmett Till lynched in 1955/Way down near Selma Alabama/Ali on Grill, the settler taunted/Burned in Duma-West Bank-Palestine in 2015/ Mississippi still.”