Gaza

The twenty-six Gazan voices, both male and female, that we present in this anthology cannot tolerate being drowned out by external voices, even if they come from people with the most sincere feelings of solidarity and goodwill. These voices would obscure the power of their voices, obscuring their stuttering, their hissing, and their bouts of silence before a reality in which words are emptied of their essence. These voices do not require our learned analyses, nor even the barest minimum of our condemnation. From them, we can humbly accept that they shout in our faces: "Shut up! Let us speak. We have something to say to the world, and we will say it with all our might, in a battlefield that poetry has never touched."