1. Think of questions you would like to ask Ahmad Almallah (they can be questions about his situation as Palestinian-American, about the endurance of genocide, about his poetry, about being a poet...)
2. Create your own "fuck you" poem of 14 lines relating what you have learnt and read so far to the contents of this class (if you prefer, you can put the poem in one of the characters' voice, e. g. "the son" in Symbols and signs). Some exampes of possible first lines
Fuck you to "welcome" and to coming back
Fuck you Acme Beer. We will never reach the hill.
Fuck you golden door. My people came to sweep the floor.
Fuck you Riviera. Jesus this is Gaza.
Fuck you to the line break. We don't get breaks between classes
etc.
Fuck you and your colonial language, people are dying.
ReplyDeleteFuck you silence, do not follow me.
Fuck you crab apple, the phone rang again!
Fuck you western desert, there's ghosts being fed.
Fuck you number, i'm my own self!
Fuck you minimalism, give us immigrant writing!
Fuck you golden door, there's no liberty here.
Fuck you englishness, diaspora rules the world!
Fuck you curtains, I'll never reach her.
Fuck you temptation, I'll never kill a soul.
Fuck you broken clock, life doesn't stop for you!
Fuck you war, you've done quite enough!
Fuck you alienation, I am human after all!
Fuck you oblivion, there are stories to be told!
I decided to use the pronoun "I" for believing it forms a more personal connection with the texts na the reader.
Fuck you bureaucracy. No citizen should need a “certificate of naturalization”.
ReplyDeleteFuck you forever-gone girl. You were nothing but an illusion.
Fuck you Referential mania, you exclude people from the real world.
Fuck you birthdays, you make people feel sad and obliged to want things they never asked for.
Fuck you subways, we wait for you and you are always late.
Fuck you insomnia, stop haunting me.
Fuck you paranoia, you make me feel like the whole world is against me.
Fuck you walls, you have divided people for centuries.
Fuck you oppression, nobody should have to struggle to speak for themselves.
Fuck you forced exile, one should decide whether to leave or not.
Fuck your categories of home, diaspora unsettles them all.
Fuck your promises, give us peace.
Fuck you prejudice, for the way you archive people but never listen.
Fuck you indifference, you watch suffering and call it normal.
-Laura Bettio
1. I'd like to ask Ahmad about his experiences having to reconcile both his Palestinian heritage and his American identity. Does he feel like they clash? That they can't mesh, so they'd have to be negotiated? Did he feel austrasized from the beginning, expecting it to happen maybe, or did he find solace in America? How did it feel to be recognized and praised for his written work in this new host land? Did he ever feel like a spectacle, or did he feel integrated as a poet? What led him to become a poet?
ReplyDeleteDear students, this is your teacher speaking. There is more to poetry :) If you look at Noor Hindi's poem in the anthology (p.142), you will see that "Fuck you(r)..." is just in the title. The idea was to create a 14-line poem (sonnet?) with one of the exemplified lines, or another of your invention... but not too insist too much in the anaphora "fuck you". We will talk about this later.
ReplyDeleteIf I had the opportunity to speak with Ahmad Almallah, firstly, I would be interested in understanding how poetry helps him facing the experience of exile and diaspora, and whether he uses writing to reconnect with Palestine or to highlight the distance created by his migration to the USA.
ReplyDeleteI would then also ask how he approaches the responsibility of poets in writing about the suffering experienced by Palestinians, and if he believes in poetry as a medium to keep memory alive across generations and time.
Finally, I would like to know if in his opinion poetry is more a personal expression or a form of witness and resistance.
I want to ask about the creative process and the more about how poems evolve . When and how do you know what a poem is finished? - Eva Angelovska
ReplyDelete