Angelina Guoby Angelina Guo
語言:
English
Photo Courtesy of the Interviewee
“Writing is the last line of defense.”
— Yahya Al Hamarna, My Voice Cannot Be Bombed (2025)
Yahya Al Hamarna is a Palestinian writer, researcher, and refugee from the Gaza Strip. He studied Political Science, International Relations, and Diplomacy at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. His writing focuses on human rights, justice, international law, and global politics, while his poetry explores memory, exile, love, and survival in times of war. His work carves deeply into the living memory of Palestine, preserving the voices, places, and everyday moments that violence seeks to erase. His poignant debut poetry collection, My Voice Cannot Be Bombed, was published by Iskra Books in 2025. Through social media, excerpts have travelled around the world, and a full French translation by Elissa Kayal and Nada Sattouf has most recently been published by Éditions de la Rue Dorion in Quebec and Burn∼Août in France.
I first discovered Yahya’s work through Instagram when Elissa, a classmate from university and a wonderful poet, shared pieces of My Voice Cannot be Bombed on her profile. Reading this collection from my living room in Taipei, I was simply struck by the grace and enduring strength of Yahya’s work. We started exchanging messages a few months later, and Yahya enthusiastically agreed to conduct an interview for New Bloom Magazine despite the difficulties of connecting to Wi-Fi, charging his phone, or finding something to write on. As the genocide in occupied Gaza continues to ravage hospitals, schools, homes and families, My Voice Cannot Be Bombed is a testament to the power of words, to Palestinian dignity and resistance, and speaks to Yahya’s dreams of resuming his studies and returning to a free, liberated homeland.
Angelina Guo (AG): Can you tell me more about the process of writing My Voice Cannot Be Bombed? It was written during the ongoing occupation and destruction of Palestine between 2023 and 2025, in devastating material conditions. In one of the opening poems, you write: Writing is not just letters on paper; it is an act of survival, a voice of resistance, and a promise for tomorrow. How and when did you start writing poetry, and how would you describe your relationship to literature?
Yahya Al Hamarna (YAH): I did not begin writing because I wanted to become a poet. I began writing because I needed somewhere for my heart to go. As a child growing up in Gaza, I was fascinated by history, stories, and the hidden lives inside books. At my United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees school, I discovered that words could preserve what time and violence tried to erase. I started by writing short reflections and poems, trying to understand the world around me and to give meaning to emotions that were often too difficult to speak aloud. My family, especially my mother, encouraged me to keep writing, and little by little, literature became part of who I am. I was born on August 11, 2001. As I grew older, I was a very quiet child who loved to express things through writing. Then I experienced my first war and my first displacement in December 2008, and then again in January 2009, when I was displaced for the first time in my life. I am a refugee, but I want to prove to the world that we deserve to live. After that, I excelled in my studies, especially in history. I learned a lot about history; I read about colonialism, revolutions, India, America, and the Soviet Union, etc. Then, I decided to study political science and volunteered in many civil society organizations. I dream of traveling because I have never traveled before. I dream of watching Real Madrid play, and I want to have a family and feel embraced in this world. I will continue my story when I travel, when I survive.
When the genocide began in 2023, writing changed completely. It was no longer simply an artistic practice; it became a way of surviving psychologically and emotionally. I wrote inside displacement tents, beside destroyed buildings, during forced evacuations, and in moments when electricity, internet, and even silence had disappeared from our lives. Sometimes I wrote by candlelight, sometimes on my phone while trying to save its last few percent of battery, and sometimes on torn pieces of paper because I feared losing everything.
My Voice Cannot Be Bombed was never planned as a book. It grew naturally, one poem after another, each text trying to rescue a fragment of life before it vanished. I wanted to preserve the ordinary moments that war tries to erase: the smell of bread, the sound of my mother’s voice, the orange trees planted by my grandparents in our village of Zarnoqa, mornings with coffee and Fairuz, conversations with friends, dreams of university, and the quiet hope of an ordinary future. I realized that memory itself had become an act of resistance.
For me, literature has never been an escape from reality. It is a way of entering reality more deeply. Poetry allows me to speak about grief without surrendering to it, and about hope without denying suffering. It reminds me that even when homes are destroyed, language can still build a place where humanity survives.
I often say that writing is the last line of defense. Before buildings collapse, they try to erase our stories. Before they erase our stories, they try to silence our voices. Every poem I write is my refusal to disappear. It is my way of telling the world that we are more than headlines or statistics—we are human beings who love, dream, study, laugh, remember, and continue to imagine tomorrow.
AG: In My Voice Cannot Be Bombed, you talk about your grandfather Mustafa, heading towards Gaza before a guard arrests you for carrying a pen, which he deems to be a dangerous weapon. Can you tell me more about your grandfather and your relationship to your homeland?
YAH: My grandfather, Mustafa, is one of the people who taught me that a homeland is something you carry within you long before you can return to it. He was born in the Palestinian village of Zarnoqa, a place famous for its orange groves and fertile land. In 1948, like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, he was forced to leave his home during the Nakba. He arrived in Gaza carrying almost nothing except memories that would accompany him for the rest of his life.
Growing up, I listened carefully whenever he spoke about Zarnoqa. He did not describe it as a place lost in history; he spoke of it as though he had walked its streets that very morning. He remembered the orange blossoms, the fig and olive trees, the wells, the fields, and the people who gave life to the village. Those stories became my first geography lessons. Before I ever learned the names of countries from schoolbooks, I learned the map of Palestine through my grandfather’s memory.
My grandmother, Safiyya, also lives inside those memories. I still remember the smell of the bread she baked, the warmth of family gatherings, and the simple beauty of everyday life before everything became defined by war. These ordinary details may seem small, but they are the foundation of my writing. They remind me that Palestine is a place of families, songs, recipes, gardens, laughter, and childhood.
In one poem, I imagine being stopped by a soldier because I am carrying a pen. That image is symbolic. It reflects a reality in which memory itself is treated as something dangerous. A pen cannot destroy a building, yet it can protect a history that others try to erase. That is why writing has become my way of returning home, even when I cannot physically reach it.
For me, homeland is much more than geography. It is memory, language, relationships, and inheritance. Even if I am displaced from one place to another, Palestine continues to live within me. As long as I remember the stories my grandparents entrusted to me, and as long as I continue writing them, I know that my homeland cannot be erased.
AG: Can you tell me more about the languages you speak and the relationship you have with your mother tongue? The French version of My Voice Cannot Be Bombed was directly translated from Arabic. Meanwhile, your debut collection was published in English. Do you write poems in multiple languages?
YAH: Arabic is the language of my heartbeat. It is the first language I heard from my mother, the language in which my grandparents told stories about Palestine, and the language in which I first learned to dream. Whenever I write, I naturally return to Arabic because it carries the rhythms, emotions, and cultural memory that shaped me from childhood.
Although My Voice Cannot Be Bombed was first published in English, every poem was originally born in Arabic. The English edition was made possible through careful translation and close collaboration with people who deeply respected both the language and the spirit of the poems. More recently, seeing the book translated directly from Arabic into French has been another moving experience. It reminds me that while languages may differ, human emotions can still travel across them.
I also write in English from time to time, especially when communicating with readers around the world or sharing shorter reflections on social media. But poetry feels different. When I write poetry, I usually begin in Arabic because that is where the images arrive first. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the sentences, and even silence itself belong to Arabic before they belong anywhere else.
Translation, for me, is not simply changing words from one language into another. It is an act of trust. A good translator does not only carry the meaning of a sentence; they carry its heartbeat. I have been fortunate to work with translators who understand that they are not only translating poems, but also carrying fragments of Gaza, Palestine, memory, and hope into new languages.
Every new translation feels like opening another window in a house that many people believed had been buried beneath the rubble. It reminds me that literature refuses borders, and that poetry can continue travelling even when its author cannot.
AG: How has it been for you to see your work travel? Can you share some meaningful experiences you’ve had in the process of circulating your poems online?
YAH: One of the greatest paradoxes of my life is that while I have been unable to leave Gaza, my words have travelled far beyond its borders.
There is something deeply moving about knowing that a poem written inside a displacement tent, during a power outage or beneath the sound of drones, can find its way into someone’s home in Montréal, Vancouver, Toronto, Texas, California, Arizona, Barcelona, Paris, Marseille, Swansea, Cardiff, Tenby, Turin, Naples, Tuscany, Zurich, Brussels, Mexico City, Basel, Hamburg, Oslo, and countless other places I could never fully name. Every translation, every reading, every message reminds me that literature creates its own geography—one that is not limited by checkpoints or borders.
Social media has become much more than a platform for me. It has become a bridge. Through it, I have met translators, writers, artists, students, musicians, and readers from all over the world. Some translated my poems into languages I had never imagined they would reach. Others painted my words, read them aloud at literary festivals, organized book events, or simply wrote to tell me that one poem stayed with them long after they had finished reading it.
One experience that touched me deeply was seeing complete strangers organize readings of My Voice Cannot Be Bombed in different countries while I remained in Gaza. They carried my words into rooms I could not enter myself. It reminded me that literature does not belong to one person once it is shared; it becomes part of a collective human conversation.
Perhaps the greatest gift has been discovering that compassion also travels. In the middle of unimaginable destruction, I found friendships that crossed continents. Many people first came to my poems, but they stayed because of our shared belief in human dignity, justice, and hope.
Every message I receive tells me the same thing in a different language: that no wall is high enough to stop empathy, and no bomb is powerful enough to silence a truthful voice.
AG: Who are your favorite authors, and the people or books that have had the most important influence on you ? Are you working on more poems these days?
YAH: I feel that every writer carries a small library inside them, and I am no exception.
Among Palestinian writers, Ghassan Kanafani taught me that literature is not separate from justice. His writing showed me how stories can preserve identity, dignity, and collective memory even in exile. His novels, especially Returning to Haifa, Men in the Sun, and Umm Saad, remain among the books that have shaped my understanding of literature and Palestine. Mahmoud Darwish revealed the musical possibilities of language and transformed homeland into something both intimate and universal. My favorite book by him is A Butterfly Effect, a work I return to often for its beauty, wisdom, and quiet hope. From Emile Habibi, I learned the quiet power of irony and how hope can survive even under impossible circumstances. Ibrahim Tuqan and Fadwa Tuqan reminded me that poetry can carry both national memory and profound personal emotion at the same time.
Beyond Palestine, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab expanded my understanding of modern Arabic poetry. His imagery, rhythm, and emotional depth taught me that poetry can be rooted in one’s homeland while speaking to all humanity. Kahlil Gibran has also been an important companion, especially in the way he combines philosophy, spirituality, and simplicity into language that continues to resonate across generations. Radwa Ashour’s The Tantoura is another novel that left a profound impression on me, reminding me how literature can preserve memory across generations.
Alongside these, some of the books that have deeply influenced me are Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Albert Camus’ The Plague, Will Storr’s The Science of Story, and the philosophical writings of René Descartes. These books continue to challenge the way I think about morality, human nature, storytelling, and philosophy.
The attached photo shows some of the books from my personal library that have accompanied me through years of reading and writing.
I do not try to imitate any of these writers. Instead, they remind me that every generation must discover its own voice. My own poems are born from today’s Gaza, from displacement camps, interrupted university studies, childhood memories, the smell of coffee, the sound of Fairuz in the morning, and the ordinary dreams that war has tried to postpone. Those experiences have become my own language.
Yes, I continue to write whenever circumstances allow. Sometimes I write poems; sometimes essays, letters, or fragments that may eventually become another book. I have learned never to force writing. Some days survival itself becomes the only sentence I can manage. On other days, a single image of a child smiling, a small olive tree growing beside the rubble, birds returning to the sky opens the door to an entire poem.
As for how I am doing, I continue to live in Gaza with my family. Like everyone here, we face uncertainty every day. Yet I continue to believe in tomorrow. I still dream of completing my university education, travelling freely, meeting my readers, planting olive trees, and one day writing not only about survival, but about rebuilding, joy, and peace.
As long as I can still write, I know that hope has not left me.
Before we finish, I would like to share one simple hope.
Like many young people, I dream of travelling—not to escape my identity, but to expand it. I want to see the other side of the world, to walk through museums and libraries, to sit in cafés where writers gather, to discover new cultures, and to meet the people who have carried my poems across languages and continents. For years, my words have travelled where I could not. I hope that one day I will be able to follow them.
I also dream of continuing my education by pursuing a Master’s degree and, eventually, a PhD in political science and international relations. Knowledge, for me, is another form of resistance. I want to dedicate my research and writing to human rights, international law, justice, and peace, and to contribute—however modestly—to building a world where dignity is protected rather than denied.
Today, I respectfully appeal to the international community, academic institutions, cultural organizations, and countries that uphold human rights to help make this future possible by opening a safe path for me to travel. This is not simply a personal wish; it is the hope to survive, to continue learning, to keep writing, and to return one day with greater knowledge to serve my people and contribute to our shared humanity.
I believe that literature builds bridges where politics often builds walls. If my poems have reached the world, perhaps one day I will too.
I remain, above all, a Palestinian who continues to plant hope, to dream, and to survive.
To stay up to date with Yahya Al Hamarna’s life and work, you can follow him on Instagram @yahya.alhamarna.pal, or directly purchase his book via the Iskra Books website. If you are interested in helping Yahya translate his poems into Chinese or organize events around his work, please feel free to reach out to [email protected]