Using a random number generator to pick my ebooks in July led me to read two poetry collection in close succession. Like a lot of people, I struggle with poetry but I’m finding that Palestinian poetry collections hit differently than collections tackling other themes/topics/issues. No doubt because of how devastating it is to read poems that highlight the plight of Palestinians at the hands of settler colonialism, all published before 2023 - so before this all ‘started’ according to mainstream western media.

Even the poems that didn’t fully sweep me up had moving lines, and the more Palestinian literature we read, the better to understand what it is to live under occupation. 

I will note that my e-copy had some very distracting formatting errors. At first I thought the words were run together intentionally for poetic effect (an effect I would not have enjoyed), but I quickly realised it was just a formatting issue which is a bit sad! (If someone now tells me that no, it was intentional, my bad and I didn’t like that technique.)