Echoes from Carved Stone

Mohammed Abu Lebda is a Palestinian poet, translator, writer, and a human rights advocate from Rafah, Gaza. His work offers a necessary spiritual interiority to the narratives on being a Gazan, and cuts through the romanticization of suffering that Gazans are often subject to – via an overemphasis and celebration of their sumud, resilience. In this zine, the first published collection of his bilingual poetry: mythological themes as metaphors weaved into lived realities of a life under siege in Gaza, offer a searing indictment of the timeless brutality of the Israeli occupation. What does it mean to live in the constant shadow of death? What can a Gazan dream of when every aspect of life is constricted and weighed down under the chokehold of the siege & occupation? 

His poem – How One Leg can Act – was written in response to the Great March of Return, which rendered countless protesters with amputated limbs.

In Mohammed’s words: “I chose Echoes from a Carved Stone because each poem is a fragment of resilience, a testament etched into the stone of survival and memory. The carved stone represents endurance through the unyielding challenges life has placed in my path, and the echoes are the voices, thoughts and memories that still linger, reverberating through time. These poems are echoes of my experiences, etched so deeply that they will remain long after they were first spoken. It’s about resilience and the power of expression to last, even when everything else falls away.”