The listening room

Hear the poems

غرفة الاستماع

Poetry was an oral art long before it was a written one, and Arabic poetry never entirely stopped being one. These are the recordings — by the poets themselves where they exist, and by readers who carried the words where they could not.

Each recording sits beside a link to the written poem in both languages. Reading and hearing it are not the same experience; do both.

7 recordings

break (clustered)

Suheir Hammad · 2008 · Audio recording

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From breaking poems — Hammad's hip-hop-fused book of war, women, and survival — a meditation on cluster munitions and what they leave behind: do not fear what has blown up; fear the unexploded.

Recording: TED

If I Must Die

Refaat Alareer · 2023 · Video

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Written in 2011 and shared again weeks before an Israeli airstrike killed him in December 2023, Alareer's final poem became a global testament — a request to be remembered as a story, and a kite, bringing hope.

Recording: Palestine Festival of Literature

From Acre Prisonمن سجن عكا

Traditional — sung by Firqat al-ʿAshiqin · 1930 · Video

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The funeral song for Fuad Hijazi, Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir, hanged by the British at Acre prison on 17 June 1930. It went out with their funerals and never stopped being sung — in the camps, at commemorations, and inside the prisons.

Recording: Firqat al-ʿAshiqin — فرقة العاشقين

Resist, My People, Resist Themقاوم يا شعبي قاومهم

Dareen Tatour · 2015 · Video

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The poem that put a poet on trial: posted online in October 2015, it led to Tatour's arrest, conviction, and imprisonment — before an Israeli court ruled on appeal that the poem was not a crime.

Recording: Dareen Tatour

Running Orders

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha · 2014 · Video

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Written during Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza, Tuffaha's poem answers the phone call no one should receive — the one that says your house is next — and asks what courtesy means in a prison by the sea.

Recording: WordsWest Literary Series

Spoiler

Hala Alyan · 2020 · Audio recording

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A poem that begins with a diagnosis of fear and ends as an instruction for living: whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.

Recording: The New Yorker

We Teach Life, Sir

Rafeef Ziadah · 2011 · Video

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Ziadah's answer to a journalist who asked if Palestinians would 'just stop teaching their children to hate' — a spoken-word poem that became one of the most shared performances of Palestinian poetry ever recorded.

Recording: sternchenproductions (original 2011 performance)

Songs for Palestine — Jabhawee

The prison songs of 1930 have descendants. Jabhawee writes and produces songs for Palestine today — for the land, and for the named: one of these was written forSidra Hassouna, five years old, killed with her family in Rafah on 12 February 2024. Its artwork is Sidra with her twin sister.

Palestine Soul of my Soul

Jabhawee · the channel's most-heard song

Palestine Is Free (It’s You That’s Occupied)

Written for Sidra Hassouna — the artwork is Sidra with her twin sister · Her record →

Palestine is Free (Like a touch from the sun)

Jabhawee

River to the Sea — Rooh El-Rooh

Jabhawee

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Listening and sharing is how these songs travel.

Recordings are embedded, not hosted

Everything on this page plays from where its rights-holder published it, credited on the card. Nothing is re-hosted here, and nothing plays until you press play.

If you know of a recording that belongs here — especially one in the poet’s own voice — bring it to the Majlis.