poetry as witness

Early this week – on Monday, to be precise – I fond myself writing another poem. The starting point for this one was the horrific footage of a young Palestinian man, Sha’aban Al-Dalou, burning alive in his hospital bed after an Israeli airstike. It led me to consider the failure of so many politicians and so much of our media to take any kind of stance in opposition to an ongoing genocide, and that – in turn – led me to write a 21st century homage to Pastor Niemöller’s famous poem First they came.

My thanks to both CultureMatters and Yorkshire Bylines for publishing the poem. Platforms for political poetry are few and far between, and I’m very grateful for what they do. If you’ve the time to click their titles (above) it’ll take you to their respective webpages and help show them there’s an audience for poetry which concerns itself with the world around us, and encourage them to continue publishing it.

You’ll also find the poem on my Facebook page, on my Twitter feed, and on here my website. If it’s something you decide you want to share, I’m absolutely fine with that. And if you want poetry which bears witness, in the most powerful way, to what’s going on in Gaza, I thoroughly recommend you check out the work of Abeer Ameer, a poet of Iraqi heritage living in Wales. What she is writing is powerful, necessary, and incredible. Thank you.