Fady Joudah

Um...

I think madness.

You know, I just realized a few years ago that when a thought comes into my head, I began to kind of notice that I'm thinking it in a poetic manner.

I don't know exactly what that means, but it feels like...

Everything I live for is for the idea of a poem that may or may not transpire on the page.

So I don't think I worked at it consciously.

I think it's maybe something from my childhood that has now taken hold.

You know, yeah.

Yeah.

I have particular memories of my father and my maternal uncle telling stories that included classical verses or verses from classical Arabic poetry.

And so I would memorize them.

And then my uncle or my father...

Sometimes, and these were in the early 70s, so during the height of the PLO phase of the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

And so some new poems would come out and they would be in these Palestinian affairs productions and publications.

And they would read them, and sometimes they would recite them in an excited manner.

And they would tell me if you memorize it, or this part of it, you'd get a quarter or something.

And then also, this is really difficult to explain.

I've tried before.

In school, and my schooling was in Arabic, there was this game that we played that was particular to poetry in Arabic.

For those of you who may know Gazal, the form.