We are very pleased to announce that two new poems, 'A Soliloquy before Time' and 'Time,' by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, Refugee Hosts' writer-in-residence, will feature in Odyssey: Words and Music of Finding Home, a narrative recital by the award-winning actor Christopher Kent and pianist Gamal Khamis. You can watch the live stream of the recital performed on Friday … Continue reading Yousif M. Qasmiyeh’s poetry in Odyssey: Words and Music of Finding Home
There it is: the camp that is yet to be born by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, Oxford University and Refugee Hosts There it is: the camp that is yet to be born. The camp’s existence will always be on a par with time in the superfluity of tenses. I do not know how the archive can … Continue reading There it is: the camp that is yet to be born
Listen to Refugee Hosts' writer-in-residence, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, in conversation with Adriana X. Jacobs (University of Oxford) who is the producer and host of the Staying Alive: Poetry and Crisis podcast series, as he discusses writing the camp, poetry’s ways of seeing, and the signs that death leaves in the camp to remember, revisit, and translate.
On the 28th and 29th of June 2019, Refugee Hosts' Writer in Residence, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, will be contributing to the World Conference on Statelessness in The Hague. In addition to speaking and reading his poetry at the panel on 'Citizenship in Unrecognised States' on 28th of June, Yousif will be participating in a series … Continue reading Yousif M. Qasmiyeh at the World Conference on Statelessness
The Throne Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, University of Oxford and Refugee Hosts Writer in Residence No one has ever seen the bereaved mother. They arrived at night bearing nothing but their cries. The father, the son, the wheelchair... In the picture, the order is merely an aesthetic thing. Or more precisely an echo of the … Continue reading The Throne
On Monday, 4th February, Refugee Hosts' writer-in-residence, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, will facilitate a translation workshop focusing on contemporary Arabic poetry produced by Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian refugees as part of the Refugee Hosts' creative writing workshops convened by Prof. Lyndsey Stonebridge and Yousif in Lebanon (Baddawi Camp and Hamra) and Jordan (Jerash and Al-Zarqa) in 2018. Held as part of the Oxford Comparative Criticism Translation (OCCT) Discussion Group … Continue reading Translation workshop on contemporary Arabic poetry produced by Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian refugees.
Marking the launch of the inaugural issue of the Migration and Society journal, in this piece Yousif M. Qasmiyeh (Refugee Hosts' Writer in Residence and Creative Encounters Editor of the new journal) sets out one of the aims of the journals' Creative Encounters section; to problematise the notion of voice. The piece also presents five poems … Continue reading “To embroider the voice with its own needle”
Necessarily, the Camp is the Border Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, University of Oxford and Refugee Hosts Writer in Residence There, the noise is also the religious… On a day as chilly as the pulses of those who took away our things and left the door ajar, you gave birth to me in darkness: you, the midwife, … Continue reading Necessarily, the Camp is the Border
Flesh when mutilated called God By Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, University of Oxford and Refugee Hosts Writer in Residence Time is God’s journey to his shadow. An incomplete sentence is the place. In the non-occurrence of birth, aborting the camp becomes the only possibility. Might the dialects be the place that will be? The hole is … Continue reading Flesh when mutilated called God
The Hands are Hers Yousif M. Qasmiyeh - University of Oxford The hands are hers – fractured urns of intimacy and anticipation. They would cut, mend, darn, comb, bathe, clean, feel and above all submit themselves as seals of presence at the UNRWA distribution centres. In this photograph, the face is outside the frame but … Continue reading The Hands are Hers
