Since the time of the Nakba and for many decades, the Palestinian cause has been a major title of Palestinian poetry and a compass for poems that tell the story of the lost homeland and sing the dream of freedom from occupation and nostalgia for the country.

However, Moroccan and Arab poets believe that the new generation of Palestinian poets has become more focused on its daily tragedy than on the Palestinian cause because of the successive frustrations it feels.

The Moroccan Francophone poet, translator and writer Abdel Latif Al-Labi - who recently published with the Moroccan poet, novelist and media figure Yassin Adnan the book "The Anthology of Current Palestinian Poetry" - says that what distinguishes this poetry "is that the poet's voice has become focused on his tragedy as a human being and not as a person, group or issue." .

He added - in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of presenting the ontology at a symposium hosted by the 27th International Book Fair currently being held in Rabat on Sunday evening - "It was necessary to issue this ontology, as the Arab reader knows most of the poets of the old generation of resistance poets, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Mo'in Bseisu, and Tawfiq." Zeyad".

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He continued, "Now there are Palestinian poets in different parts of the world, Iceland, Sweden... This poetry has begun to address his own life, how he lives this retreat that occurred in the interest in the Palestinian cause, and the danger is that the national rights of the Palestinian people may be digested."

Al-Laabi, winner of the French Goncourt Prize in 2009, added, "This matter forced us (Yassin Adnan and I) to carry out this ontology. There is a very serious absence of the cause of the Palestinian people at the Arab and international levels."

The two Moroccan writers: Yassin Adnan (right) and Abdel Latif Al-Labi recently published "An Anthology of Current Palestinian Poetry" (Al Jazeera)

He added, "In these difficult conditions experienced by the Palestinian people, it was - for me as an intellectual and poet - the weakest of faith is to do this work."

The ontology was collected in addition to Al-Laabi, the Moroccan writer, poet and journalist, Yassin Adnan.

It includes 13 female and 13 male poetic voices, and Al-Laabi intended "that the female and male voices be equal."

He said, "This is a mighty work done by Yassin Adnan, because he is a media man. We were not satisfied with only poets who were published in books, but Yassin went further than that to what is published on the Internet, as new generations publish more on the Internet than they are published in books."

The challenge of frustration and fragility

For his part, Adnan told Reuters, "At the Arab level, we felt as if Palestine was suffocating a voice, a cause, and a presence. There may be political initiatives that we do not look at with complacency, but we, as poets, are far from politics, so all we have is poetry, so we worked, Abdul Latif Al-Labi." And I, on this bouquet of poetry, in order to re-draw attention to Palestine through it.

He added that by following him on social media and electronic magazines, he felt "that there are new things happening in Palestinian poetry, and they are transformations at the level of issues, easing the slogan and moving away from major issues."

He said, "Perhaps people write their fragility without an inferiority complex. They do not feel proud of their Arab affiliation, even their relationship with Palestine. That Palestinian who flirts with Palestine is no longer (existent). There are profound transformations that affected the Palestinian being and self, which were manifested in the poem."

He added that poetic choices in the ontology tried to reflect these transformations.

Adnan told Reuters, "We are far from Mahmoud Darwish's voice, who says, "I am an Arab," and is proud of belonging to the Arab nation. We do not feel this pride in these poems...Sometimes you feel that their Palestinians are an existential predicament that they suffer and they engage with with anxiety."

He said, "The new Palestinian poet is no longer as romantic as the previous one. He is no longer a missionary. His frustration reached a degree that led him to extreme fragility."

Palestinian poet Khaled Suleiman al-Nasiri told Reuters after the symposium, "This ontology noticed an important thing, which is that Palestinian poetry is no longer the poetry that used to be... it resembles weapons and fighting. Poetry has become linked to the Palestinian human condition more with the humanitarian issue."

He added, "The uprising has unfortunately stopped. The poet's weapon now is his word. We discovered with time that working on true art and creativity away from ideologies and loud voices is more feasible."

Adnan said that the ontology has moved away from the great poets and focused on the future of Palestinian poetry.

Absence map

Two years ago, another Palestinian poetic anthology was published, entitled "Map of Absence" by Palestinian academic and critic Atef Al-Shaer. Palestinian literary and poetic production.

The book "Map of Absence" is displayed on the sidelines of an event organized by "Soos" College in London (Al Jazeera)

The book is based on a compilation of the most important works of Palestinian poets, from Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Samira Azzam, and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, down to the modern generation, to show that all of them were moved by the Nakba and were their compass, to express what that event left in the Palestinian self, and how it transformed the life of the Palestinian individual. Upside down, and at the same time, how Palestinian poetry helped preserve the collective memory of the people whose land is occupied and subjected to a systematic campaign to rob their culture, according to a previous report by Al Jazeera Net.

During the presentation of this ontology that simulates Palestinian alienation from the Poetry Gate, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SAOS) at the University of London, the author Atef Al-Shaer confirmed that the Nakba was expressed in the poems of Palestinian writers through what they lived in their daily lives. A political discourse,” as much as I tried to humanize the Palestinian cause and convey its details and the feelings that the Palestinian feels in his awakening and even his sleep when he is threatened with bombing or storming his home at any moment.