The Poetics of Witness and the Language of Protest

This program takes the work of Palestinian-British poet Mira Mattar and Turkish-Dutch poet Çağlar Köseoğlu as a starting point for an open discussion on how poetry can bear witness and respond to geopolitical violence, focusing our lens on the ongoing devastation (of countless lives, of social systems, of cultural and educational institutions, of the environment) in Gaza. Much of the public discourse around solidarity for Palestinians has become mired in disagreements over terminology and phrasing: over what can be read between the lines of certain mottos or chant; on the guarded boundaries of how the word “genocide” is defined and employed; and how “safety” can be wielded as a shield against any confrontation or critique. How might poetry help us refuse the coopting of language by institutions of domination, violence and extraction? Following short readings by the poets, and guided by discussion and writing prompts, we would like to invite all attendees to engage in a collective consideration of the importance of poetry and poetic thinking around contested language, as well as in formulating new modes of attention and dissent.

Mira Mattar writes fiction and poetry. Her novella, Yes, I Am A Destroyer, was published in 2020. Her chapbook, Affiliation and her first collection, The Bow were both published in 2021. A new chapbook, And most of all I would miss the shadows of the tree’s own leaves cast upon its trunk by the orange streetlight in the sweet blue darks of spring, has recently been published by Veer2. She regularly reads her work in the UK and abroad. Mira lives and works in London.

Çağlar Köseoğlu lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He teaches in the humanities department at Erasmus University College and at MEiA at the Piet Zwart Institute. His poems have appeared among others in nY, Samplekanon, De Internet Gids, Kunsttijdschrift Vlaanderen, and Social Text. His poetry collection Nasleep [Aftermath] was published by het balanseer in 2020. Nasleep takes the Gezi Park protests of 2013 as a point of departure and explores the remnants of that historical moment, oscillating between polyphonic, critical noise, and post-revolutionary affects.

This event is organized in conjunction with the Modern and Contemporary Literature Research Group (ICON) and the NWO-Veni projects “Poetry in the Age of Global English” and “Ecologies of Violence,” through a collaboration by staff from English Language and Culture, Comparative Literature, and the Graduate Program in Gender Studies.