The Dialogue of Poetry: Palestinian and Israeli Poets Writing Through Conflict and Peace

 I spent last July in Tel-Aviv helping my daughter with her newborn twin babies. 

Between sleepless nights of feeding, and changing, and sleepless days of listening to the endless stream of news, and the minute by minute reports of the falling of the rockets,  I had plenty of time to think about the futility of war and the slippery peace.

So 

When I returned and was searching for an idea for this presentation, war and peace were on my mind and then I came across a book called:

After the First Rain

It is a collection of translated poems written by Israeli poets about war and peace and all that is in between. While I found the idea very compelling I thought that it will be even more interesting to look for poems written by Palestinian poets about the same topic. I did find some (it is hard to find translated poems). And then I decided , because of the short time and the magnitude of the subject to limit  myself to the presentation of one Israeli poet and one Palestinian. 

While I am rather familiar with the Israeli poetry on this topic, Palestinian  poetry for me is like having a chance to look at world completely foreign, and wrapped with many misconceptions. So to me personally, the experience was very interesting.