Mizna+RAWIFest 2023

With a keynote address from Hala Alyan, join us for a weekend of poetry, dance, and art celebrating SWANA artists and beyond!

RAWI Craft Talk 1: An Exploration of Kinships with the Olive Tree

RAWI is holding a craft series! The first of our talks comes from Layla Feghali of River Rose Re-Membrance and the SWANA ancestral project.

Established in 1993, RAWI is a national organization that provides mentoring, community, and support for Arab American writers and those with roots in the Arabic speaking world and diaspora. We are a non-profit 501(c)(3) literary organization dedicated to supporting and disseminating creative writing and scholarly writing by Arab/SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) Americans and those from the Arabic speaking world–which often means creating space and highlighting voices and people threatened by erasure. We put on readings, panels, workshops, roundtables, conferences, and festivals that emphasize inclusivity.

An illustration of poppies with eyes, half turned upward and half turned toward a glow emanating from right side of the frame.



“All the poplars and my ancestor’s solemn orchard

Were, I swear, smiling at me with Arab affection.”



Twelve months after Israel began its annihilation campaign of Palestinians in Gaza, the steadfast, larger-than-life journalist, Bisan Owda, asks the soul question of the year—

who are the caretakers of Palestinian earth?

 As she pans her camera out, she points to the Mediterranean Sea and the palm trees dotting a refugee camp in Khan Younis, where Palestinian children move their bodies along a breezy lilt in their teacher’s voice. The teacher calls, they respond, she calls again—children respond in the long Palestinian breath we call home. The children, like the roving protagonist in Layla ‘Allush’s poem, reflect a childhood quintessence— namely, the freedom to give and receive joy. For a moment, the genocide collapses as they raise their autonomous voices to sing, and the land, momentarily languorous, expands with their song. This phenomenological moment captured by Bisan is also sacramental because it harkens back to a past (and subsequent future) where Palestinian children lived (and will live) in the luxuriance of childhood. 

When these unfiltered images echo and ricochet across the planet, I recognize in them a visual periphery of my reason for being. This past year, I reconstructed memories of my childhood, imagining them to be small, linked gardens or little Edens extending into adulthood, where I could take my fill of love despite the daily brokenness. A few months ago, I saw a photograph of our family home in Gaza, and it was still standing. I ran my eyes over the lone, sunburnt cypress tree, the grapevine, and the terrace decorated with orange-black tulip tiles. Every inch of it is a repository of belonging. What’s a house but an extension of the collective body? What’s a body but an extension of God?

It's human (though privileged) to feel despair, especially when images of massacred babies, children, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers come at us incessantly, especially when we witness entire generations of Palestinian bloodlines being erased, especially when bunker busters rip the earth, killing indiscriminately and causing craters the size of little villages. The violence of colonialism seeks to recalibrate our existence and break our longstanding, centuries-old relationships with places and lands to which we belong. Capitalism tells us that it doesn’t matter who you are as long as you accrue capital. It doesn’t even matter if the property you own is ancestral; the only thing that matters is ownership (often theft) instead of belonging. 

Everywhere we look, we are assaulted by values forced on us by Western necro politics though we see past their perfunctory hypocrisies. Muslim feminist scholar Fatima Mernissi says that Western societies dominate with a narrowly constructed definition of time, which consists of seemingly innocuous evaluations, inventories, and measurements. The colonialist obsession with inventory symbolizes ultimate control—the more you know about a people, the more control you exert over them. Mernissi even refers to this construction of time as an insidious kind of imperialism. For the West, time ushers in ‘progress’, a euphemism for wealth accrual, while simultaneously marching those it colonizes (including the earth) toward death.

As Israel increases its aggression against Lebanon, a displaced Lebanese woman remarks that the Israelis bombing Beirut, “may be masters of the sky, but we are masters of the earth.” When the oppressed remind those drunk with power and avarice where real power resides, a certain continuum of time (and its system of oppression) collapses into the ether.

Even though time dominates, I argue that we are living in a time of preternatural changes. A new paradigm of time can be born because death machines are not sustainable, because there’s an intergenerational shift in thinking about war and genocide, and because youth have a profound disagreement with their elders about the degraded environment. And if we listen to the land reflecting the voices of our children, we’ll know the answer to Bisan’s essential question, w

ho are the caretakers of Palestinian earth?

 Yes, they’re the ones smiling at us with affection.




***

 is a Lebanese writer and visual artist. Her book 

 won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Free Palestine.

The earth is witness both to current events and toward the future/those who honor the earth. I illustrated this idea through the poppies, half turned toward the current and half turned toward a glow emanating from the future/horizon. Was thinking about how these poppies have endured and witnessed so much since antiquity and continue to grow through, and after, and into the future.

A Palestinian American poet on a year of genocide

On the Past, Future, and the Singularity of Belonging 

On the left, the cover of Sarah Ghazal Ali's poetry collection Theophanies, with a grayscale drawing of a saint with arms crossed over their chest kneeling on the ground, looking down at the ground. A column of light pours from their face, and where the light touches the ground, flowers grow. On the right of the image is a headshot of Sarah Ghazal Ali, in a burgundy hijab, looking into a mirror confidently, surrounded by a black background.

1. How did you come to writing? Who were the guides, teachers, guardian angels, or ancestors who brought you here?

I have loved to read since childhood, but really took to poetry in high school when I wrote a research paper on Sylvia Plath’s poem “Tulips.” It was the first time I really lived in the world of a single poem for an extended period of time. I loved the experience of finding and checking out every book about Plath from my town library, and trying to contextualize the poem within what I was able to learn of her life and work. It brought poetry alive and made it feel serious and important. In college, I was lucky to have an encouraging teacher early on, the brilliant poet and translator Whitney DeVos. She introduced me to the work of Natalie Diaz and Claudia Rankine, and made it feel possible to devote myself to a life in writing. I look to Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Parveen Shakir, Etel Adnan, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Mahmoud Darwish as ancestors and guides.

2. What do you write towards? What do you write against?

I write towards the untouchable and unknowable divine. I write against silence and erasure.

3. How did you find the title of this book? What kinds of negotiations were involved—with yourself, the work, or the publisher?

The moment I encountered the word theophanies for the first time I knew it would be the title. I don’t remember the moment of encounter, but I remember clearly the conviction that followed—it was completely natural, as though there had never been and could never be any other options. I never questioned it, and my publisher didn’t, either. When I’m stuck, I still sometimes write the title “Theophanies” at the top of a page and see what happens. I think I could write into that title for the rest of my life and not be done with it.


4. We would love to know a little about your process of writing 

. How much planning vs discovery was involved? Did anything about the experience of writing or revising surprise you?

It was almost entirely discovery. I originally set out to write a very planned book about something else entirely, but every poem I wrote was stale and absent of risk or real emotion. I felt compelled at some point to write into my namesake, the matriarch Sarah, and when I finally gave myself permission to write a persona poem in her voice—the result of which is the poem “Annunciation”—it unlocked a new obsession. The most surprising part of revision once the book was accepted for publication was how painful the experience was, how much it hurt to reread and relive the hurt that led to the writing of certain poems. The things they grieved—patriarchal teachings, domestic violence, loneliness—didn’t stopped being relevant for me just because the book was done.

5. How do you want this work to be read? What do you most wish for from your reader?

I want it be read with generosity, an open mind, and a willingness to learn. I come to poetry to be challenged and to learn new words, concepts, and ways of seeing. I hope readers will take the time to explore new-to-them narratives about figures they might think are solely Biblical. I hope they’ll google what they don’t know rather than assume that their not knowing means this work isn’t for them. Please join me in my love of cross-narratives, and of the many valences of a story, dear readers!

6. One of the central tenets of RAWI's mission is promoting literary engagement with

SWANA writers. Are there any SWANA writers, past or present, who you feel have not received the readership or critical attention that they deserve?

As a South Asian, Muslim writer, I feel much kinship with my SWANA peers. Some contemporary SWANA poets I’ve encountered and been lucky to befriend / admire / learn from are Lubna Safi, Summer Farah, Hajjar Baban, Ladan Osman, Saba Keramati, and Sadia Hassan.


 we want to know: how did you celebrate this book's birth? How would you like us to celebrate with you?

I celebrated with my nearest and dearest friends, with a book cake, and with a beautiful launch in a beloved bookstore. I celebrated with my daughter, an infant, and cherished seeing her little hands try to turn the book’s pages. I would love for you to celebrate with me by paying a visit to your favorite tree and telling it hello from me, or by requesting 

 is a poet, teacher, and editor. She is the author of 

 (Alice James Books, 2024), selected as the Editors' Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A Stadler Fellow and recipient of 

 poetry prize, her work has appeared in 

The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review,

 series, and other publications. She is the poetry editor for 

 and lives in the Bay Area, California.


"I write towards the untouchable and unknowable divine. I write against silence and erasure."

Mentorship

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On the Past, Future, and the Singularity of Belonging

ZAGHROUTA!: Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali