Introduction by Wiam El-Tamami
I first met Nasser Rabah in 2024, and he has since become a beloved friend, honorary uncle, and close collaborator. I say “met,” though of course we have yet to meet in person: Nasser was born in Gaza in 1963 and continues to live there, in his homeland that has been turned, by the forces of occupation, into a prison.
He has published six collections of poetry and two novels and is currently at work on his third.
Over the course of our nearly two years of friendship, Nasser has astonished me with his kindness, his formidable spirit, his brilliant, irrepressible sense of humor — and with the depth of his faith through the horrors of the ongoing genocide.
And then there is his poetry.
Nasser has written prolifically over the past two and a half years. Every time it feels as though there is no language left to describe the devastation inflicted on the people of Gaza and its people, he finds new ways to articulate the collective experience.
His work maps an emotional chronology of this catastrophe. Some poems roil with rage; others heave with defeat. There are poems of listlessness, of waiting, of desolation; ars poeticas that reflect on what it means to be a writer at this moment; and sweeping anthems that reverberate with power, defiance, and grace. Through it all, Nasser’s poetry pulses with life, with startling images, with small details observed with patient tenderness — with faithful, loving attention to the world around him, even as it is being brutally and systematically destroyed.
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