“Poetry is the antibiotic of our souls”
Batool Abu Akleen in conversation with Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
Batool Abu Akleen is a Palestinian poet and painter whose work transcends borders. At 15, she won the Barjeel Prize for her poignant poem I Didn’t Steal the Cloud. Displaced from Gaza City after October 7, 2023, Batool continues to write and share her powerful poetry, reflecting resilience and displacement. Her poetry has been translated into multiple languages, including Italian and English, and has been published in renowned magazines worldwide.
Background:
Batool Abu Akleen had just turned 18 and was dreaming of immersing in a life intrinsically linked to poetry when, in October 2023, Israel started its war on Gaza – one of the most brutal and lethal military offensives by any country on another in recent decades. The Al Remal neighbourhood in central Gaza, where she lived, suffered heavy bombing during October 22-23. Her life had changed.
Born and brought up in Gaza, which she discovered at an early age as an open prison enforced by years of Israeli occupation, Akleen drew strength from poetry. She won a poetry prize at the age of 15. She wanted to become a translator, a poet, a journalist, and a professor of poetry. She used to describe herself on her Facebook profile as ‘The daughter of the sea and the city, coffeeholic, a poet, an artist, and a dreamer’. But Israel’s incessant and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza changed everything. Bombing rendered her homeless.
She had to leave her neighbourhood and get used to living in tents, with a limited supply of electricity, food and other essentials, and internet access. Her Facebook profile now described her as ‘an angry bird who writes poetry all the time.’
Yes, she has published dozens of poems in journals from different countries during these 15 unlivable months. Poetry has kept her alive as death continues to haunt her. She wishes a whole grave for herself – neither to be piled up in a mass grave nor to be left to rot on the street.
She currently studies English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, which itself suffered great damage from Israeli bombing. She also serves as the Poet in Residence with Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) – not an actual residency but an engagement for writing and translating poetry for them.
As of January 2025, she lives in a tent in southern Gaza. But as the world already knows, in Gaza, even tents full of displaced people, including children and elderly, are not safe from Israeli bombs. She spoke to The Odd Magazine over WhatsApp, responding as and when she could access the internet.
As a Palestinian, how has your life changed in the past year?
I lost my home, some friends and some members of my family. I’ve been evacuated for three times and ended up living in a tent. I’ve experienced terror, hunger, cold, and cooking on wood fires for months. I don’t think I can call it life.
How did the war on Gaza impact your family and friends?
It’s been hard on everyone. Houses of almost all of my friends and family members have been bombed. Some of them were injured when the Israeli Air Force targeted their house. My friend Nada and all of her family members were killed during the first days of the genocide. My friend Raghad, who was only a high school student, was killed along with her family in a deadly airstrike on her house. My uncle got injured during the evacuation. He couldn’t leave northern Gaza as the injury was in his leg. His son who stayed back to take care of him was killed a couple of weeks ago. My grandmother was also killed in a bombardment on the small garage where she and my oldest uncle’s family had been living after they’d been displaced. Israel killed my professor Refaat Al Areer. They killed my friend Mohammed Abu Sami, who is an aspiring artist, in the Al Mamadani massacre. There are many others, each of whom has a special place in my heart. Their loss left holes in my soul.
How did the war impact your writing?
First of all, it’s not a war; it’s a genocide. At the beginning of the genocide, I’d been evacuated to places where there was no Internet connection or electricity. I had nothing to do except meditating or writing. I spent all the days observing the world around and writing poetry. I wrote more than I’ve ever written in my life.
Before the genocide, I was always busy living life. Now, I am busy not living death. I do that by writing poetry. I am fighting the genocide in my poems. The main topic of most of the poems is “death”. I received many invitations to contribute to books or magazine issues. It made me wonder and ask why everyone became interested in my writing when I am about to be killed. Does facing death add more quality to my writing that everyone wants to read what I write? This also reminds me of Refaat Al Areer who became a well-known figure after he was killed; although, he had been writing fabulous poems for many years. Why hadn’t the world noticed or talked about him and his poetry before that? Is this a way of easing their conscience and not to feel guilty? I hope this world will shed more light on poets and writers from the third world.
Did writing help you cope with the situation?
I think so. You actually reminded me of a friend who used to say, ‘Poetry is the antibiotic of our souls.’ This is what poetry means to me. It protects me from losing my mind and helps me understand what’s going on inside my soul. In some poems, I try to explain a specific feeling. And, what a release when I achieve this aim! A week ago, I was suffering from insomnia. I couldn’t sleep until I wrote a poem, in which I described how it feels like not sleeping for days. When I understand what I feel, I open the door of my soul for this feeling and let it go, as any antibiotic does.
Can you tell us about your coming book?
Absolutely! It’s my first poetry collection, a bilingual edition. I named it 48 Kg. It’s going to be published on May 16 this year by the Tenment Press, London. The title is inspired by the ongoing situation. As you may have known from news reports that many humans have been shredded into small pieces; sometimes their relatives cannot find all of the flesh, and even if they found it, one person’s flesh is mixed with another’s. Each poem in this poetry collection stands for a kilogram. So, the poetry collection contains 48 poems. Most of them are written during the genocide and are talking to or about death. I consider my poems parts of my flesh. Even if one day my body is shredded into pieces, I don’t have to worry about those parts that might go missing. I have collected myself in this poetry collection.
Here are some of her poems:
Blazing sun
I’m burning my fingers
they’re melting one after the other
slowly, as war passes slowly:
Thumb to bake bread fresh like martyrs’ bodies
Forefinger I put to the little girl’s lips
it warms her heart
so the dread will go & calm will ripen
Middle Finger I raise between the eyes
of the bomb that hasn’ t yet reached me
Ring Finger I lend to the woman who lost
her hand & her husband
Little Finger will make my peace
with all the food I hated to eat.
& another five fingers to move the blazing sun aside.
War doesn’t stop
I run out of fingers.
My hands get shorter
fingers grow
my hands melt
fingers grow
my chest melts
my heart,
all of me melts
nothing remains but the fire
flowing from between death’s fingers
fire may choke death
but I’m the one who’s choked to death.
(Originally published in Modern Poetry in Translation)
This is how I cook my grief
I pick fresh hearts from the street
The most defeated ones
With nimble fingers, I steal the tears
I fill rusted sardine tins with the smell of sorrow.
Mothers’ glances cling tightly to their eyes
But I snatch them swiftly, because I resemble their children.
In a copper pot,
I boil what I stole
And add blood that hasn't absorbed
And sawdust from a coffin that was meant as the door to his new home
I pour the mixture into my heart
Until it blackens
This is how I cook my grief.
(Translated by Yasmin Zaher)
The land of weary crows
Take me to the sky on your kite
And let me fly far away from this life
Show me how death is just a matter of time.
Take me to the sky
Where pain is a joke
And healing is a joy
Where eyes are luminous with threads of sunlight.
Don’t leave me here drowning in this lake of tears
Jumbled with blood from your veins
Don’t leave me here
If there is no way to fly on the kite
Then teach me how to sail swiftly
Before being shredded by monsters’ mines
If your paddles are broken
I’ll use my arms
But they’ll be devoured
Before I even try
Can you teach me how to float?
So the monsters gobble my soul
Then the shackles of sorrow will flee from my home
I’ll close my eyes slowly
My dim aches will immigrate with the flock of miserable crows
My blood will be kneaded with beloveds’ mourning and wails
And amputated limbs.
There I’ll be rooted
On a vast cloud of mercy
Earth beneath me
Kites surround me.
The white doves will land on the earth
Bleeding my pains
They will pluck their feathers
Spread them on the window frames
Plant them between lovers’ fingers
So they write their love
Before remorse
When their darlings arise to the sky
And leave them on this land,
The land of weary crows.
(First Published in we are not not numbers)
Preorder her book here