Arabic-language poem (14-18), judged by poet Golan Haji

WINNER: Batool Abu Akleen, Palestine

Poem Title: I Did Not Steal The Cloud

Selected Artwork: Inji Efflatoun, Dreams of the Detainee, 1961

Batool said she was inspired by the artwork because she also writes behind the bars of another prison: Gaza. Judge Golan Haji said of the poem: “Writing gives the oppressed the honor of facing themselves. Israel is a pioneer in humiliation, exerting authority through weaponry, and manufacturing prisons. One of its prisoners, a young traveler with a free gaze, uses just a few words to awaken our own gazes, which have been hypnotized by images of disaster. She turns to Inji Efflatoun’s “Dreams of the Detainee” (1961), capturing the nightmares of a trapped Gaza, crowded with suffering, where jailers at the northern and southern borders mount checkpoints and brandish rifles and whips, waiting for escapees suspected of anything, even stealing a cloud. This is a possible impossibility. There is no metaphor in reality. Batool roams through the difficult life in the camp. Her senses are awake. We smell the foul stench of the kerosene lamp, taste the pickled peppers in falafel sandwiches, and we almost scratch our shoulders when she sketches a humble portrait of children wearing blue t-shirts, “their fabric like a flame that burns their wheat-colored bodies in summer.” Batool, using the eyes of her body and spirit, without exaggeration of wit or tears, draws the details of prisoners’ weakness and humiliation. The world narrows like a prison cell, and her poetry lights it up with pain and with mercy.”

RUNNER UP: Fayrouz Ahmed Allam, Egypt

Poem Title: My Small Town

Selected Artwork: Zeinab Abdel Hamid, Quartier Populaire, 1956

Of Allam’s poem, Haji said: “In her short poem, the poet melts down a painting that comes from another time and place and, from it, she generates a world where she wanders between colors and smells, etching what she sees in simple words and common idioms. She knows this place well. It is her hometown, which lives inside her, and it’s buzzing with the friendly hustle and bustle of small-town neighbors: roving carts, porters, street vendors, day laborers on the sidewalks. Fayrouz questions the silent residents of Zainab Abdel-Hamid’s painting “A Popular Neighborhood” (1956), where a yellow tram emerges from the fabric of silence into another age, where it enters the streets of Fayrouz’s imagination—a friend greeting the children. Ordinary greetings are precious, and “good morning” can be a key to explaining hearts and minds. Dreams are a power the poet uses to transform what she sees into what she wants, and what she wants here is the familiar. Here the magic and joy of her life are enough, surrounded by the grace of light, the scent of saffron, and the laughter of children playing football while being embraced by the sun. She sees life through childhood’s eyes, and this is what poetry strives for.”