February 15: Memory for Forgetfulness by Mahmoud Darwish
February 15, Saturday
Workshops for Gaza Reading Group + Fundraiser
Online & in-person in NYC
2pm New York | 9pm Beirut | 8pm Paris
*Registration link here
We continue to engage with the fight for Palestinian freedom by turning to the words of Palestinian writers themselves. Nowhere can we find more powerful expressions of resistance and the will to endure. Join Bhakti Shringarpure and Suchitra Vijayan
to read and discuss legendary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness, a book of prose poetry about the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982.
Please register directly at the Workshops for Gaza website as all proceeds will go to the Sameer Project: https://www.workshops4gaza.com/calendar/memory-for-forgetfulness-a-reading-group
Participants will be asked to purchase a copy of Memory for Forgetfulness from the W4G x Open Books site, where all proceeds are being donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.
This reading group will provide an accessible entrypoint for first-time readers of Darwish as well as poetry in general, while giving participants an opportunity to reflect on the current catastrophe occurring in both Palestine and Lebanon.
Participants will have the option of meeting either online or in-person. In-person participation will be limited to 25, and the NYC address will be shared upon registration.
About the book
One of the Arab world's greatest poets uses the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the shelling of Beirut as the setting for this sequence of prose poems. Mahmoud Darwish vividly recreates the sights and sounds of a city under terrible siege. Memory for Forgetfulness is an extended reflection on the invasion and its political and historical dimensions. It is also a journey into personal and collective memory. What is the meaning of exile? What is the role of the writer in time of war? What is the relationship of writing (memory) to history (forgetfulness)? In raising these questions, Darwish implicitly connects writing, homeland, meaning, and resistance in an ironic, condensed work that combines wit with rage. Translated by Ibrahim Muhawi with a foreword by Sinan Antoon.
Buy the book at the Workshops for Gaza Open Books site where all proceeds are being donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.
About the hostsBhakti Shringarpure is the creative director of the Radical Books Collective, a and Suchitra Vijayan is the founder of the Polis Project.
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