From urgently written poems in response to war in Gaza or deaths in the Meditarranean to poignant and incisive social media posts, Jehan Bseiso uses poetry to move past lyric emotionality to convey information, documentary and news. Born Palestinian, she is a poet, researcher and aid-worker currently based in Beirut. She grew up in Jordan and is currently working on a collection of poems entitled Conversations Continued, a compilation of real, misheard and misremembered conversations — always interrupted, never really complete or closed. In this podcast, she spoke to me about her experience as a participant in the Palestine Festival of Literature, the tedium of border crossings and moving fluidly between professional and poetic language.
Bhakti Shringarpure is editor-in-chief of Warscapes magazine.
Photo courtesy ©Robert Stothard