Resistance as a Poetic Act

Hello Friends,

Today happens to be Fadwa Touqan’s birthday. A Palestinian poet born in Nablus on 1 March 1917, she would have been 106 years old today (1917-2003). Known as a poet of resistance, she’s also been given the beautiful title of the “Poetess of Palestine”.

Greatly influenced by her brother Ibrahim who was determined that she continue her education, he was instrumental in teaching her to write poetry. His support paid back: Fadwa went on to study English literature at Oxford University, publish prolifically and win several literary prizes with her work translated into multiple languages. Her first collection of poetry published in 1942 was titled “My brother Ibrahim”.

Fadwa was courageous and bold, writing a two-volume autobiography about her personal life (she came from an affluent Palestinian family and had five brothers and two sisters), as well as the social and political climate in Nablus. She resisted those things that didn’t advance her pursuits of knowledge and enlightenment weaving an essence of injustice and loss of homeland into her writing.

There is truth in the idea that all poetry is an act of resistance. But resistance comes in many forms and can stem from a complex relationship with family, society or the political landscape. Fadwa was certainly resisting an occupation both in her political activism against an occupation and in her poetry.

In order to reach a place of effective action, she would have had to touch that spaciousness that only comes from reflecting in silence. By dropping into it, she would have been able to give back in a way that is life affirming and generous instead of depleting and defensive.

With all the upheaval taking place around her, I like to imagine her using her poetic solitude as a way of deepening self-knowledge before an act of resistance. In this way, she was shaping a world that is rich and artistic despite the outer mayhem.

Fadwa was deeply engaged in the craft of poetry. Each of us can engage in whatever moves us. How might that look for you? How easy is it to find that place of vastness below the tides of our daily lives?

It is there that the feeling of being besieged or imprisoned by our immediate physical world dissolves. It often calls to us in whispers and light knocks at first, becoming louder and more insistent the more we neglect it.

There was nothing more charming to this Poetess of Palestine than the musicality of poetry or more beautiful to her than rhymes that intersected with verse that was free.

Here’s an excerpt from her poem “Face Lost in Wilderness”.  Let’s hear the rhythm together.