A FISTFUL OF POETRY (introduction by Gilad Atzmon)

(introduction by Gilad Atzmon)

Friday, December 25, 2009 at 11:24AM Gilad Atzmon

A new poetry book by Richard Jones all about Palestine and Palestinian resistance. For more details:

http://a-fistful-of-poetry.blogspot.com/

a Poet of Resistance

Resistance is the liberation of the spirit, it is the defiance against gravity. Resistance is to fight for the sake of hope, it is the struggle for the sake of beauty. Resistance is to form landscape out of words, to clothe the scenery with sounds that resemble a familiar language. But Resistance is not just about fighting, it is also to evoke feeling, to put anger into words, to put words into anger, to put meanings into shapes and vice versa.

To write a poem is to defy the symbolic order. To write a poem is to resist. To write a poem is to say NO to oppression. To write a poem is to put yourself in the place of the other. Richard Jones is a poet of Resistance

Richard is following the plea of the Palestinian people for many years. He is there listening with his heart open. He empathises with justice translating activism into metaphors. Unlike many of us who claim to know what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, he is not judgmental. He translates pain into universal ethics. He settles in the imaginary eye of the Palestinian subject. He tells us what he sees and how it feels.

Gilad Atzmon

Jenin ( The birth of a suicide bomber ) by Richard Jones

The writing is on the wall. Her finger
Directs your gaze to the childlike scrawl. There
On the pock marked plaster, thoughtfully she

Skirted many bullet holes to make her point.

Deaf to the tanks' tread, deaf to orders barked

In alien tongues, hearing only the cries

Of blooded children, or the wailing of

Their mourners, she voiced her deadly prayer.

Mother! Let me die just like an angel!
May death consume me like a flame once weak
In darkness, but now alive and blazing
Round the heads of those who hold me fast here,
Stripping bare their minds, until they too sear
Stateless, without hope, breathless with my fear.

Uprooted Palestinian