A DATE WITH A LITERARY SCHOLAR

MR REFAAT ALAREER

He is a brilliant academic and writer from Gaza.  He claims that he is not a poet. He is working as a lecturer at Islamic University of Gaza and majoring in English Literature and Creative Writing. Most of his works are about Palestine which focuses more on dialogue, performance and drama in Palestine. For more information, drop by to his blog, Facebook and Twitter. I’m sure there will be lot of things to dig about Palestine!In this precious session, Mr. Refaat did tell us about: 

1.       The Historical of the Palestine

2.      Operation Cast Lead makes people start to resists. In the 22-day Israeli military offensive Gaza between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009 some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including some 300 children and large areas of Gaza were razed to the ground, leaving many thousands homeless and the already dire economy in ruins.Both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides have failed to investigate the violations of international law, including war crimes, committed by their forces. The responsibility now lies with the international community to take concrete steps to ensure justice and redress for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators on all sides. UN investigators, led by the internationally respected Justice Richard Goldstone, have now concluded their report on the Gaza conflict. Ensuring the implementation of the Goldstone report recommendations is a crucial step towards obtaining reparations for the victims and revealing the truth about the crimes committed. If those responsible are brought to justice others will be deterred from committing violations of international law in the future.

3.       The use of poem is actually to transcend society. In addition, he also introduced several famous poet that we should know :

Famous Palestinian Writer (in English)

Rafeef Ziadah (We Teach Life, Sir)

Susuan Abulhawa (Novelist, Wala!)

Remi Kanazi (Performance Poetry)

Famous Palestinian Writer (in Arabic)

Mahmoud Darwish

Tamim Barghouti

4.       How to start writing poetry?

-          Read a lot of good and high quality poetry.

-          Believe that you can write a good stuff

-          Have the willingness

-          Scrabble your thoughts (free writing)

-          Imitate

-          Be yourself

5.      Analyzing Poems

Mr. Refaat had gone through several poems. For instance, If I must die, Over the Wall and And We Live On... He recites the poem for us! To read more about his work, visit his blog. http://thisisgaza.wordpress.com/

6.       Q& A Session

This session was the important session, where we can gain information about his biography in deeply. So, this additional information will help us in understanding Mr. Refaat.

-          His favorite poet was John Donne.

-           The writing style of Palestinian before war was same as us. After war, it changes more to the resistance where it emphasizes on memory.

-          To write ≠ to be the person. Poem is used to express our own story and feeling.

-          Woman in Palestine was active than man.

-          Before war, Palestine was a simple place where the citizen works in agriculture.

-          The picture in his blog is actually symbolizing the specialties of Palestine.

Last but not least, this date was really a precious moment for me. I did gain information about Mr Refaat, his works, tips on writing the great poems and most important thing is to understand and aware about Palestine. I agreed with Dr. Haslina’s short poem where, even we are not in Palestine, our soul’s already there! May Allah bless Palestinian.

May this date remain in our memory forever. (21/10/13)