In-store location: Shelf 2.10
By Mohammed El-Kurd, Haymarket Books, Paperback, 100 pages
El-Kurd's debut collection definitively shows that the Palestinian struggle is a revolution, until victory.
Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd's grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa - she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience.
El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa's exile from Haifa to his family's current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical and relentless horror of the Nakba.
About the author:
Mohammed El-Kurd is an internationally-touring poet and writer from Jerusalem, Palestine. His work has been featured in The Guardian, The Nation, This Week In Palestine, Al-Jazeera English, and the forthcoming Vacuuming Away Fire anthology, among others. El-Kurd graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a B.F.A. in Writing, where he created Radical Blankets, an award-winning multimedia poetry magazine. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College.
