A pioneering voice of Palestinian resistance literature, Kanafani wove journalism, fiction, and political commitment into a single moral project.
The writers
Poetry & Literature
Palestinian literature carries memory across exile. These profiles gather the life, the selected excerpt, and the way to the full collections — always with the publisher or archive named.
20 writers · earliest born 1905 · 30 poems in the anthology
Go to the poemsThe first shelf
The national poet of Palestine, Darwish turned exile, memory, and resistance into some of the most widely read Arabic poetry of the modern era.
Read the profile4 poems in the anthology
A Gaza-born poet and librarian, Abu Toha writes from the everyday experience of siege, family, and the search for normalcy under bombardment.
Read the profile2 poems in the anthology
The index
Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud
عبد الرحيم محمود1913–1948Anabta, Tulkarm district
The 'martyr poet' — a schoolteacher who wrote of carrying his soul in his palm and was killed in battle at al-Shajara in July 1948.
1 in the anthology
Dareen Tatour
دارين طاطور1982–Reineh, near Nazareth
A poet from Reineh whose poem "Resist, My People, Resist Them" brought her three years of prison and house arrest — and made her case a global test of whether poetry itself can be put on trial.
1 in the anthology
Fadwa Touqan
فدوى طوقان1917–2003Nablus, Palestine
One of the most celebrated female poets of the Arab world, Touqan gave voice to love, loss, and the Palestinian struggle from her home in Nablus.
2 in the anthology
A Palestinian American poet of diaspora, queerness, and survival, Abraham writes in the space between languages — "for yesterday & her inherited traumas."
1 in the anthology
Ghayath al-Madhoun
غياث المدهون1979–Yarmouk refugee camp, Damascus, Syria
A Palestinian poet of two exiles — his family fled Palestine for Syria, and war later drove him from Damascus to Stockholm — al-Madhoun writes prose poems of siege, asylum, and a longing with the mass of Einstein's equations.
1 in the anthology
1986–Carbondale, Illinois, USA
Poet, novelist, and clinical psychologist, Alyan maps the Palestinian diaspora in verse and prose alike — inheritance, exile, and the daily work of rebuilding a self.
1 in the anthology
Ibrahim Tuqan
إبراهيم طوقان1905–1941Nablus
Poet of the 1936 revolt and author of 'Mawtini,' the verse that served as Palestine's unofficial anthem and became Iraq's national anthem in 2004.
1 in the anthology
Poet, essayist, and translator whose "Running Orders" carried Gaza's summer of 2014 around the world — and whose later collections made her one of the most honored Palestinian poets writing in English.
1 in the anthology
Mourid Barghouti
مريد البرغوثي1944–2021Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah, Palestine
Poet of exile and return, Barghouti turned the absurdities and griefs of displacement into luminous, ironic prose and verse.
1 in the anthology
Najwan Darwish
نجوان درويش1978–Jerusalem
Jerusalem poet and editor whose flat, sardonic lines refuse consolation — 'one of the foremost contemporary Arab poets,' in the New York Review of Books' phrase.
1 in the anthology
1952–St. Louis, Missouri, USA
A Palestinian-American poet of tenderness and attention, Nye writes of her father's lost Palestine and of the small exchanges that keep people human.
2 in the anthology
Rashid Hussein
راشد حسين1936–1977Musmus, Galilee
Poet, journalist, and translator between Arabic and Hebrew, who wrote of a country turned into prisons and died alone in a New York apartment at forty.
1 in the anthology
Refaat Alareer
رفعت العرير1979–2023Gaza City, Gaza
Professor, editor, and poet of Gaza, Alareer taught a generation of young writers to write back — and left behind a poem asking to be remembered.
2 in the anthology
Samih al-Qasim
سميح القاسم1939–2014Zarqa, Jordan
A Druze Palestinian poet of resistance, al-Qasim wrote of steadfastness and belonging from his village in the Galilee, refusing both exile and conscription.
2 in the anthology
Suheir Hammad
سهير حماد1973–Amman, Jordan
Born to Palestinian refugee parents and raised on Brooklyn hip-hop, Hammad built a poetry of dispossession and defiance — from "First Writing Since" to the American Book Award–winning breaking poems.
1 in the anthology
Taha Muhammad Ali
طه محمد علي1931–2011Saffuriyya, Galilee
Self-taught poet of the destroyed village of Saffuriyya, who sold souvenirs to pilgrims in Nazareth by day and read poetry at night, and wrote in a plain voice unlike anyone else's.
1 in the anthology
Tawfiq Ziyad
توفيق زيّاد1929–1994Nazareth, Palestine
Poet of sumud and longtime mayor of Nazareth, Ziyad gave the cry 'here we will stay' its definitive poetic form.
2 in the anthology
Read the poems themselves
From Darwish's Identity Card to Refaat Alareer's If I Must Die — presented slowly, with sources and translations.
Browse the anthology