July 9, 2024, 11:07am
The Avery Review, an architecture journal based at Columbia University “dedicated to thinking about books, buildings, and other architectural media,” is launching a new project called the Gaza Pages, a space to publish writing “by Gazan writers about Gaza, about Palestine, and about living through genocide.”
The editors explain:
But there are times when our attempts to make sense of what is happening in the world, as people who think about cities and spaces, demands a break in our format; when the essay as a form feels futile against the urgencies of the present. The ongoing genocide—and urbicide and domicide—in Gaza is such a moment.
In reviewing our own commitment to the essay, we have been asking what other forms (formats and traditions) of writing are required amidst genocide. What other ways might we (re)act, evaluate, or narrate the extent to and rate at which Palestinian life is being eliminated by the Israeli settler state?
The inaugural Gaza Pages features two poems, “Where will I hide my poem?” by Mariam Al Khateeb and “The census officer will come” by Haidar al-Ghazali, in their original Arabic and in translation.
Read the poems, and much more, on The Avery Review.