On Nov. 18, over 75 students, faculty and community members filed into Pitzer College’s Benson Auditorium for Gazan poet Yahya Ashour’s reading “A Gaza of Siege and Genocide.” The collection features poems Ashour has written since being exiled from Gaza, which appear in the book alongside his own illustrations.
Pitzer English professor Brent Armendinger organized the reading with support from Pitzer’s Dean’s Office and the Melvin L. Oliver Racial Justice Initiative.
Armendinger worked alongside other professors and faculty to bring Gazan professors to Pitzer, including Ashour and visiting linguistics professor Jamal Alshareef. Ashour will step into the role of visiting professor in Pitzer’s English and World Literature department in Spring 2025.
Ashour is an award-winning poet and author who has been living in exile from his home since the beginning of Israel’s intensified military assault on Gaza that escalated last October. He has presented his work to over 50 organizations and universities such as Stanford, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Ashour’s writing paints a striking image of the realities of Israel’s sustained attack on Gaza. He parses through the violence by centering the experiences of Gazans, including his own.
His work takes up the challenging task of representing loss, violence and other issues that seem to elude representation.
“I hope students think about the ways that poetry can address issues in a way that is meaningful and perhaps otherwise difficult to communicate,” he said. “Poetry is not only about beauty. It’s something that can be used to build awareness and solidarity as well.”
The audience remained silent and entranced for 30 minutes as Ashour recited excerpts from his collection. Ashour read each poem in uninterrupted succession. He later mentioned that he often makes minor changes to the text as he recites it, each poem being continuously remade at the moment of its utterance.
“In Gaza, / people are blessed / with darkness / while they wait for missiles / to rain down on them / and have their wounds / healed once and for all,” reads one of Ashour’s poems.
“When I read or listen to Yahya, I feel like I cannot turn away,” Armendinger said.
Following the reading, Armendinger and Ashour took to the stage for a Q&A. Ashour provided insight into his writing, sharing anecdotes about his life and the experiences that have shaped his poetry.
Ashour’s work is available in over five different languages. He previously disliked translating his own poems, until he discovered a new understanding of his poetry in the act of translation.
“I was like, ‘I know this is hard, I know I hate this, but I have to do it. I have to bring these poems from Arabic to English in my voice.’ And I did it, ” Ashour said. “I discovered that when I translate myself to English, or from English to Arabic, that I understand my poetry more, and that I can see my poetry through another lens that I can’t see when I’m writing.”
Ashour spoke to the importance of a wider community of Gazan poets, referencing conversations with a fellow poet from Gaza who served as a mentor in his life. He often left their conversations in tears, whether from happiness or frustration.
“We talked for hours, like almost seven hours, and I’m not exaggerating,” he said. “We’d often go early into the morning because he would be really tough when it came to poetry.”
Ashour has been a mentee but also assumed the role of mentor, teaching young children and adults creative writing and literacy skills in organizations in Gaza.
In the spring, Ashour will instruct two courses titled “Poetic Arts: Creative Writing” and “Finding Gaza: Creative Writing – Poetry.”
“Growing up in Gaza and living there my whole life except for the last year, I was always wondering, ‘How could anyone survive the siege without poetry?” Ashour asked. “Without reading poetry? Without writing poetry?’”
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