[San Francisco’s third poet laureate, devorah major, speaks on
Palestine and how poetry can help us connect as we navigate the
violence of our world. ]
[[link removed]]

CAN POETRY MOVE US TO LOVE IN TIMES OF HUMAN CRUELTY?  
[[link removed]]


 

April M. Short
December 2, 2023
Hollywood Progressive
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ San Francisco’s third poet laureate, devorah major, speaks on
Palestine and how poetry can help us connect as we navigate the
violence of our world. _

The body of a Palestinian child lies at the al-Shifa Hospital after
an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on October 9 2023 , [Mohammed
Saber/EPA]

 

Near the end of November 2023, about 15,000 people
[[link removed]]—including
at least 5,500
[[link removed].] children—had
been killed by Israeli military bombardment in less than two months.
Israel’s near-constant bombing and artillery fire in the 25-mile
Gaza Strip began following an attack by Hamas that reportedly killed
[[link removed]] several
hundred Israeli civilians. For weeks, Israel cut off
[[link removed]] access
to water, electricity, internet, and basic supplies in Gaza.
International aid groups were barred from helping wounded and stranded
civilians—civilians largely unable to flee Gaza since it is
surrounded by walls and the Israeli military in the fashion of an
open-air prison. Many international aid organizations have called
[[link removed]] Israel’s
illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and its treatment
of Palestinian civilians, an apartheid for decades. In this current
conflict, aid groups have warned
[[link removed]] of
unprecedented humanitarian crises. On November 16, UN experts wrote
[[link removed]],
“Grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the
aftermath of October 7, particularly in Gaza, point to a genocide in
the making.”

Amid global concerns of genocide being committed against civilians in
Gaza, continual mass public protests have taken place around the world
following October 7, often led by Jewish people
[[link removed]].
Protests have called
[[link removed]] Israel’s
actions a genocide and have highlighted the humanitarian crisis
unfolding in Gaza, citing multiple statements by state officials, the
unparalleled number of civilian lives lost—so many
[[link removed]] of whom were children,
and other reported international war crimes on the part of Israel
(including attacks on hospitals
[[link removed]],
and the use
[[link removed].] of
white phosphorus chemical bombs). In mid-November, more than 2,000
musicians
[[link removed]] had
urged Israel to declare a ceasefire in Gaza, and 24 U.S. Congress
members had signed onto a letter asking
[[link removed]] U.S.
President Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire. On November 16, the Los
Angeles Times editorial board publicly called for a ceasefire
[[link removed]] in
Gaza, joining the increasing global demand for an end to the violence.

On November 24, a four-day truce
[[link removed]] was
reached between Israel and Hamas, which included “the release of
Hamas captives and Palestinian prisoners.” This agreement
was extended
[[link removed]] by
two days on November 27. Protests continued during the truce,
as activists
[[link removed]] in
New York shut down the Manhattan Bridge on November 26 and disrupted
the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, pointing out that a humanitarian
pause is not the same as a long-term ceasefire.

Political Poetry

Meanwhile, since the beginning of November 2023, multiple reports
stated entire families, with members spanning
[[link removed]] three
or four generations, had been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
As of late November, an unknown number of nameless and unidentifiable
bodies lay in piles in Gaza, including thousands of children. Among
the most tragic images
[[link removed]] from
the Gaza Strip during these weeks on social media were those of
children’s names written on their bodies, in hopes that they would
be identifiable if killed. After learning about the practice in a
social media post, San Francisco’s third poet laureate, devorah
major, [[link removed]] wrote the following
poem:

CHILDHOODS REMEMBERED
do you remember holding
your small child hand up to
your father’s large comforting hand
amazed at its size compared
to your vine thin fingers?

do you remember making
fingers and palms into church and steeple
and then opening to see all the people?

do you remember drawing
eyes and mouths on fingers
creating silly finger people?

thumb folded around
pointer finger making a mouth
opening and closing—

silly games of childhood
laughter crawling down our bodies
dissolving in the air
and reappearing
as a tickle giggle
finger wiggle.

remember?

not wanting to be one of the missing
or one of the unable to be identified killed
the little girl wrote on the inside of her
heart shaped palm between heart
and lifelines in neat Arabic script
“if my hand survived
this is my name” before she was slain.

these children do not have
numbers burned into their arms
but many have written their own
names statements and identification numbers.

pants legs rolled up reveal
the brothers inscribed legs reading
Ahmad Nateel
Jowan Nateel
Rebhan Nateel.

did the oldest write it for his younger brothers
or were they perhaps written by a trembling mother
or a father writing while damming his own tears?

now they lie next to each other
softly browned saplings chopped down
before they could bear fruit.

the whole family it seems
assassinated in what their killers
call a cleansing
a mowing of grass
a righteous final solution

are you old enough to remember being a child
old enough to remember growing up
maybe even remember becoming old

they are not
their dead bodies
reflect the memories they will never have

one child has written on her arm
“no I will not die”
does she still live

Poet devorah major has also written the poem “land, settlers, and
genocide: america, australia, palestine
[[link removed]]” and others
[[link removed]] in response to “the most recent
October 2023 Israeli attacks on and siege of Palestine,” she says.
She notes that Israel’s current military response in Gaza is,
“…precipitated by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which was
precipitated by the continued aggression, murders, and land grabbing
by Israel back to 1948.”

Major is a California-born, “granddaughter of immigrants, documented
and undocumented,” award-winning poet, and writer of both prose and
fiction who taught poetry craft, science fiction, short story writing,
and composition at California College of the Arts (and has taught at a
number of universities and other higher education institutions as
well). She has been part of the poetry performance group Daughters of
Yam for more than 20 years, and is a Cave Canem
[[link removed]] poetry fellow. Growing up, she
says, poetry and books were “everywhere around” her home. Her
father was a (nonfiction) writer and befriended poet Bob Kaufman in
San Francisco’s North Beach when she was young, and her father would
sometimes recite lines from Kaufman’s poetry book _Golden Sardine_
[[link removed]] to
her. She wrote her first poem around the age of seven or eight, about
a turtle.

She says the reasons she began writing poetry as “an avocation,
vocation, and passion” is another story. This story is rooted in the
Black Arts Movement, which had come to be by the time she was a teen.
While studying dance and theater she found herself writing more and
more poetry.

“A lot of us did,” she says, sharing that poet Sonia Sanchez was
also a friend of her father’s. “I remember finding her
chapbook, _Homecoming_
[[link removed]],
lying on our dining room table. The Last Poets were playing on the
radio and poetry seemed to be the lingo of the times. It spoke to the
promise of a revolutionary change that would bring the world I saw in
my dreams to a world I lived in. It was wonderful and I was hooked.”

In an interview with the Independent Media Institute, devorah major
shared about her poetic process, why she writes poetry that is
political, and the power of poetry to help us find connection and
understanding as we navigate all the facets of this world, including
unfathomable human cruelty.

APRIL M. SHORT: What continues to draw you to poetry as an art form,
especially in times of upheaval, violence, and conflict?

[devorah major]

devorah major

DEVORAH MAJOR: Writing poetry is, for me, a way to see things more
clearly, to question what surrounds me, to seek or express a kind of
spirituality, to heal and be healed, to learn. I find words quite
powerful. Wars are waged with weapons, but peace is attained through
words.

In these times where there is so much dishonesty in the media and even
much more distraction from what is really going on in our world,
poetry can be a kind of light that helps us consider or reconsider
where and how we stand in the world. Ultimately, I am not sure human
cruelty and acts of genocide can ever be really understood, but poetry
can help us see it more clearly and define better ways to vanquish it,
ways to be truly human, to be more humane. Poetry is a means of
connection.

When I have had the privilege of sharing my work in an international
poetry festival, what was most inspiring and encouraging for me was
that each of us, hailing from far parts of the globe and speaking
myriad languages shared the same visions for a world that thrived on
unity and cooperation and, of course, love—and turned from war and
oppression, not just through words but through action.

AMS: Is there something unique that poetry can offer in coming to
terms with difficult and painful realities in the world?

DM: I think that poetry can, in a concise and moving way, provide
historical context, which often provides strategies for successful
struggle and timely reflections on the happenings of the times. This
helps people to emotionally and spiritually engage with these
realities instead of just viewing news bites.

At its best, poetry can say in a very few words what an entire essay
might discuss. Before we can solve a problem, we must clearly see its
parameters. Poetry helps one to see. It is, after all, one thing to
look, and quite another to see.

AMS: Will you please share why and when you wrote “childhoods
remembered [[link removed]],” and your
personal process with this piece?

DM: My daughter sent me a social media video of living and dead
children with names written on their arms and legs. When I finished
crying, I realized I had to write a poem that considered what this
horrific act of writing on one’s body so that one’s corpse could
be identified meant.

I remembered teaching my toddler daughter hand games that I had played
as a child. That was the poem’s doorway for me. That poem poured out
of me. Sadly, the translation did not name the girl who wrote, “No,
I will not die,” or I would have included her name in the poem, too.

AMS: Will you please share your process and reasons for writing
“land, settlers, and genocide: america, australia, palestine
[[link removed]]”? What were you thinking and
what compelled you to tell this story in this way?

DM: What struck me about this barbaric response to the Hamas action,
which insofar as it killed civilians also was barbaric, was that the
occupation of Indigenous people’s land had a long, brutal history. I
focused on North America, Australia, and Palestine. I actually
researched what trees grew in America and Australia when they were
uncolonized land and what crops were grown and harvested in Palestine
for centuries.

Did you know Israelis uprooted olive trees that were over 2,000 years
old to plant their pine trees? While looking into that, I found out
that some olive trees chopped down and planted over with the Israeli
pines began to regrow after 50 years dormant, and split open the pine
trees. I often do some research for this kind of poem to make sure I
stay focused on yes, the emotions, the story, the moments, but also
the actual history and ecology that can provide useful metaphors.

AMS: Some Americans (and others) have been afraid of speaking up
against Israel’s actions and/or are inundated with media narratives
in support of Israel. Have you experienced backlash in regard to these
poems and/or your work in general? If so, how do you navigate that?

DM: Some Americans fear their shadow. Most do not see the full
picture and have no sense of history or context. American media
contributes to this ignorance because of its own imperatives that rest
on supporting the capitalist, war economy and sustaining the current
power structure.

My fear is the world the children, all the children, will inherit if I
am complicitly helping in this destruction with silence. Thus far,
however, the comments I have gotten about my poems have all been
supportive.

AMS: Have you ever felt hesitant to share poetry that is political,
and where do you source the courage to create and share your art and
your voice?

DM: I consider all art, and thus all poetry, political. The choice of
focus, the choice of point of view, the choice of subject are all
political choices. Does one look at the sky and only note its colors
and the way they make one feel in that moment and maybe planes seen
swooping by? Or does one notice how its colors have turned because of
pollution, and the planes are warplanes leaving trails between the
clouds? Does one write of idyllic, mythic love or investigate love’s
truths? Do the words seek to distract or engage? Do I speak for
positive change and the empowerment, freedom, and uplifting of the
people, or do I write words that support, sustain, and possibly
glorify the rulers and the military-industrial complex that is quite
international these days and times? For me, even if I am writing a
poem about the stars or the sea, the way I address that subject is
innately political while I strive to maintain its scientific and
poetic integrity.

Idon’t find it an act of courage to speak truth as I see it. It
takes no more courage to write on human struggles in these times than
it does when I write of love or of the universe. However, at times, it
does take a measure of courage to look, to actually see, especially
now when the planet is burning in so many ways—Palestine, Sudan,
Ukraine, American city streets, among the many formal and informal
wars; and of course, the planet itself is suffering its own warming
and fires due to human excesses. I am never hesitant to share my
voice. I simply keep working to improve my craft and my clarity,
hoping that some of my words land in other people’s ears and/or
hearts and are found of value.

_This article was produced by __Local Peace Economy_
[[link removed]]_, a
project of the Independent Media Institute._

_APRIL M. SHORT is an editor, journalist and documentary editor and
producer. She is a writing fellow at Local Peace Economy
[[link removed]], a
project of the Independent Media Institute. Previously, she served as
a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff
writer for Santa Cruz, California’s weekly newspaper. Her work has
been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Salon
and many others._​​​​​​​

 

 

* Israel-Hamas war
[[link removed]]
* bombings
[[link removed]]
* Contemporary poetry
[[link removed]]
* love
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]