Write Palestine A Poem

 Lina Al-Sharif, a mother of two kids, has never given up her dream. After she got her education from the Islamic University, she aspired to fulfill her MA degree in the creative writing field in Qatar; and she succeeded. Lina has been writing poetry for nine years, tackling the issues of Palestine; namely Palestinian women in homeland and diaspora.

The English Department, on behalf of its topnotch members, has recently hosted Lina over a Skype meeting to let her deliver more about her experience in writing poetry. 

The meeting has been attended by a host of members from the Faculty of Arts including the Head of English Department Prof. Mohammed Al-Haj, and the Author of “Gaza Writes Back” Prof. Refat Alareer, in addition to a number of interested English students.

After introducing herself, Lina culminated her journey telling by reciting some of her own poems such as “Gluten free Manaa’ees” which focuses on the theme of clinging to everything reminds of Palestine including the food, Manaa’eesh. She also recited“Al-Khazan” which takes inspiration from “Men In The Sun” by Khassan kanafani. It is written in a unique form following Arabic poems, from right to left; and has some Arabic letters and numbers, as Lina clarified. Lina said that she, in this poem, chose the form before the theme because she thought “it is fitting with the refugee crisis all over the Middle East”.

Not only writing poetry, Lina has performed “Dear western Journalists” poem in different congregations. In this poem, she conveys a message to journalists who wanted to cover her coverage of head, who were always criticizing her Hijab. In her speech, she noted out that women can use poetry to tell stories and convey what they believe without being too obvious. 

Because Lina has had a remarkable experience in the poetry world, students seized the opportunity to ask her how they can write poetry in a proper way. She answered, “Poetry comes very naturally” if a writer gets inspired with the poems most interested in.  She recommended writers keeping updated with the most recent poems and poets, namely Palestinians.