POP III

The third Poetry of Palestine night was a success. Held on the rooftop of al-Masa building in Ramallah, it was one special way to wrap up Palfest. Tonight was unique in that the performers were our peers and classmates. 14 students who took part in the Spoken Word Poetry workshop with Remi Kanazi took to the stage and astounded us with their words, their courage, and bravery. Seriously! Remi opened with a poem of his own, and then introduced the "Rising Fourteen" (as we dubbed them) in pairs, after waxing lyrical about them. The poems were amazing, conveyed with such sincere and honest emotion. Each performer surpassed our expectations, and we had to take our hats off to them for finding it in themselves to open up in front of a 100+ audience. The themes of the poems were largely P&P--Palestine and Political, but there were some really lovely, cute, and funny pieces about Smoking, Hijab (loooved everything about that performance!), and Stop Looking at Me Like I'm a Kid. A video message by the one and only Philip Pullman (author of His Dark Materials trilogy) was unfortunately lacking the auditory technologicalfunkthing for us to hear, so Remi filled in cracking jokes during the unsuccessful technical fixing. Tashweesh once again provided interludes, and they improve every time. We are so proud of our classmates, this generation is rising up and making their voices heard!