Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to this interview here with Mohamed Moussa, Palestinian poet from Gaza. I'm Kevin Williamson, I work at the Scottish Poetry Library and I'd just like to welcome Mo to discuss his work, his poetry and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Before we start, Mo, tell us a little bit about growing up in Gaza, what it was like.
Chapter 2: What was it like growing up in Gaza for Mohammed Moussa?
Thank you for having me here at the Scottish Poetry Library for the second time. First of all, growing up in Gaza is actually interesting because from a very young age you are exposed to so many different realities and your memory as a child or
your memory as a grown-up man right now is always connected or linked to so many beautiful and ugly things like the wars, the continuous wars that you live as a child and you recall the first time, for example, you saw a tank, a soldier, the first time the war happened And as a grown-up man also it's difficult because the childhood place that you planted and nurtured is no longer there.
The faces that you grew up with, some of them are no longer there. But there were so many beautiful things to recall. Your love for the sea, for example, and how your soul as a Gazan is connected to what the sea is. I remember being a child and walking to the sea early in the morning with my friends.
whom half of them has been killed in this genocide and enjoy the sea in the early days of summer and I remember also so many beautiful things about the food the taste of the food in Palestine and in Gaza we cook the best food and the smell of there are certain herbs that remind us what home really is
So the relationship you built with Gaza from a very young age is really beautiful and it's really unique. Somehow the place you grew up in or built your memories in shape who you are. So you look like the place you grew up in most of the time as you look in the mirror and see the features of the place you grew up in and who you are.
What sort of things did your family do work-wise?
My father worked with the Red Cross. My mother was a housewife. And he was a lovely man.
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Chapter 3: How did Mohammed's family influence his upbringing?
He speaks three languages. He speaks Hebrew, speaks Arabic for sure, and speaks English. And there were times he was working with the Red Cross and translating from Arabic into English to the Palestinian prisoners inside the occupied territories. And he spent half of his life working with the Red Cross. And he's a hard-working man, you know, and a lovely man, you know, very sociable.
And my mother, the same, too. You know, she is a wonderful woman. my brothers and sisters. We were a small family and compared to families in Gaza, we are a very small family. They enjoy their time with their grandkids. And yeah, they were a simple family as everybody else in Gaza. And I remember my mother and I remember my father.
how all they care about is to build for their kids, invested in the house they built all their lives for their children, you know. But the house is no longer there. My family is no longer there. So it is strange, you know, how no matter who you are as a cousin or what you dream of or what you work for will be taken from you if it is a place, if it is a family.
Does your sense of roots in Gaza, do you feel this has been damaged in your memory? Or is your memory still very strong of all the places and the streets, the beach, the people round about you?
I feel like my memory has been threatened in this genocide. Because the places I recall in my mind, in my head, they exist. The people who I miss, they exist in me, right? And the places too. But if I want to go back to that person, to that place, it's no longer
So there is something incomplete, there is something missing in your relationship with memory and it is hard to fathom sometimes because it leaves a void inside of who you are and you need to carry that void with you wherever you go. It's really difficult to fill that void, I think. The void of absence and the void of memory.
And this is something almost unutterable that an entire people are going through.
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Chapter 4: What role does education play for Palestinians in Gaza?
Most of the cousins have family members that are no longer there and people that they cherish and love are no longer there. And our relationship with our people has to be like this, you know, when you have a friend when you have a wife, when you have a father, a mother that you lived your whole life with. They meant life to you. They meant home to you. They meant childhood to you.
So when they are gone, parts of who you are go with them too. And many of the people in Gaza feel what I feel, but not all of them could utter this in words or talk to everyone about this void in them, this loss and what this loss has left in them.
This ability of yours to utilize language to utilize it as a form of self-expression, as a form of memory. You've expressed that education was very important to you growing up.
It is very important and most of us in Gaza found education as an escape of this reality that we live. You will find all of the families encourage their kids to educate themselves. And that's what my family did. That's what every family in Gaza did. Reminded their kids of how education could set you free from this reality that you live in as a Palestinian.
And you should not give up to that reality.
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Chapter 5: How does isolation impact the creativity of Gazan poets?
work on yourself and should learn and we found refuge in education and learning as Palestinians and as Gazans because we were isolated from the other Palestinians not only the world outside but we were isolated from
from everybody in gaza with the siege and the wars like they feel like they they are in control of of uh of the borders and everything and for like over 17 years in siege you know and yeah we we sheltered in education this sense of isolation within the strip itself
Was that a driving force to educate yourself, to communicate beyond Palestine? Absolutely.
It was a force to seek to know the other and to know yourself, because you never meet anybody but cousins there. You rarely meet somebody else. So we grew up with the power inside us and passion to meet people from all over the world. My father, for example, he works with the Red Cross and his friends would come from all over the world and he would prepare us at home.
to be ready to welcome his friends and we were excited to meet his friends. Me as a poet, I built Gaza Poets Society as a window to know other poets. I started Gaza Guy podcast to connect with other poets. So there has been a hidden urge inside of us as we grow up to learn about the other, to meet the other and to know the other.
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Chapter 6: What led Mohammed Moussa to pursue journalism?
And it has been infused by this isolation because most of the time, as a Gazan, you feel alone. I mean, you feel isolated from who you are, from being Palestinian also.
Before you built the Gaza Poets Society, journalism was your art form and your education led you first, wasn't it?
Absolutely. I started working as a journalist since I was a student of English literature and it was a really interesting journey to translate. to English journalists on the ground and to write human interest stories from a very young age. And that was in my early years as a student also. And I continued to work as a journalist because of the times we live in as Gazans.
You live war after war and you speak English and this could be a way to earn a living and also express yourself by writing stories, by working as a translator. But if you remember, you mentioned Gaza Poets Society. Gaza Poets Society was founded in 2018 and it is the first spoken word community in Gaza. And I was looking for space to share poetry in English and in Arabic in Gaza.
And I did not find that place anywhere else because most of the communities in Gaza share poetry in Arabic. This was interesting, but not my only passion. I wanted to do a spoken word community in Gaza, share poetry in English and in Arabic because I was very passionate about writing poetry in English and reading poetry in English and in Arabic. and the translation of poetry itself also.
And I decided to create that space in 2018 and we managed to be, you know, a very well-known poetry community in Gaza and one of its kind, you know, spoken word community. organizing spoken word events in Gaza, like Gaza Youth Speaks in July 2018, Hymns of Peace in November 2018, and the last one was Our Dreams Matter. And I've been doing this, you know,
with the help of friends, we were fundraising for the events by ourselves because we wanted to do something that resemble us, you know, and what we do. And when I recall the moments we founded this community, when I used to meet weekly with the poets from Gaza and connect with poets from all over the world,
it was really encouraging for the poets to come and see the other and learn from the other and talk about poetry across countries you know and how poetry how poets here write poetry how poets in gaza share poetry how me and the poets could meet and build poetry together write a poem you know one poem with all of the poets and it was really really
beautiful experience for me, for the poets, also when they stepped on the stage for the first time during these events because, again, you know, it's always political as a Gazan to participate in an event and you have to talk about specific things, but you really get the chance to step on the stage to talk about yourself, you know, as a poet, as a Gazan, as a woman, as a man.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the Gaza Poets Society?
That's a very good question.
The thing about poetry is with its fragmented form, offers you a space to express yourself. And the other forms couldn't express, couldn't offer me this space. The story would take time to finish, to complete. And a podcast would take time to finish. Prose would take time to finish. Writing a novel, writing a book would take time to finish.
But the fragmentation, the urgency of what poetry is and what makes poetry unique offered me a window to look from and to talk to the world immediately. And our realities as Palestinians, as Gazans, is really fragmented and urgent. Suddenly a war happens and we have to talk to the world. And during these times, especially during this genocide, I couldn't do any journalism at all.
I was asked to do some newspapers here in the UK, but I couldn't. not in school but i couldn't work my nerves my health couldn't focus on a story to finish and i only found poetry a way to talk to the world and i was hit by the loss of my family and i felt like i can't walk on a story because this is this has already happened to me and happening to everybody around me. What could I say?
To whom should I speak? And about what exactly? So I was asking myself questions. And after the loss of my family in this genocide, it was really hard for me to even speak. and to find the time and the way to express this grief. And the thing is, it was only through poetry I was able to speak before the death of my family and after.
the killing of my family there is something strange about poetry and beautifully strange for sure that it gives you that space to contain what you could not say to what you could not understand but still could be said could be understood
You said your family. I know this is an intrusive question. How many of your close family have been killed by the Israelis?
I can't honestly say the right number, but it was my own family. It was my mother, my father, my sister Hind and her kids around. five kids. My sister, my youngest sister, Saja, and my cousins also who were together in the same house. But I cannot call out the right number of the family members that I've lost because I lost so many cousins.
This is all at the beginning of the genocide?
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Chapter 8: How has the act of writing poetry changed for Mohammed during the genocide?
poem as a Palestinian is a political act like I love poetry and I always say poetry is a conversation with the self like I'm trying to listen to that voice inside of me and talk to that voice and what it is what this voice is trying to tell me and what I am trying to tell that voice and try to write this down and it turns out to be poetic
But this is an interesting journey of being a poet in itself. But being a Palestinian poet is something I cannot disconnect myself from, because I have to talk to the world as a poet. But if I write a love poem, it would sound political as a Palestinian.
that's why sometimes you write the poem and after that you find that the poem went to a whole different dimension that you could not you cannot control the journey of the poem itself and yeah
it's interesting journey for the poem from being with you and from being in solitude to being with multitude, you know, but as a Palestinian poet, you know, there were many times I was in Gaza never seen the whole world outside and my poems could be read in
here in Scotland, you know, in London, but me personally not allowed to cross the border, to cross, you know, the Rafah crossing and travel to the world and see the world. So it is interesting being a poet from Palestine and especially from Gaza, but I always feel like the journey of the poem is very different from my journey as a poet.
In the face of everything you've experienced personally and what your people have experienced, to write a love poem is such an incredibly political act.
Yes.
In the face of what's happened.
True. There were times, you know, before the genocide, you know, during this was because it's not the only war that I lived or experienced or any Gaza lived or experienced. there were so many words we lived and experienced and we used to write about a love poem and in my previously published collections you will find a lot of love poems but
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