Hummus and Poetry Night

Gulf of Maine Books will host our 4th annual "Hummus and Poetry" night on Saturday, June 29, at 4PM.The event will celebrate the publishing of the anthology "Making Mirrors - Writing/Righting by and for Refugees". Our featured readers will be Sharif Elmusa and Becky Thompson. Becky Thompson is the co-editor of "Making Mirrors". She is a poet, a teacher, a scholar, and since 2015 she has been teaching poetry workshops in "camps" in Greece, meeting rafts, documenting human rights violations, and creating spaces for writers to share their work. Sharif Elmusa is a Palestinian poet,teacher, and scholar now living in Maine. He has recently published :"Flawed Landscape - selected poems" and has poems in the "Making Mirrors" anthology. Another "Hummus and Poetry" regular, Zeina Azzam, has poems in "Making Mirrors" but cannot be with us, so we hope that her brother Fateh will read her poems, and perhaps play the oud. The event is free, and open to the public, with refreshments, poetry, and good company.
Here is a poem from the "Making Mirrors" anthology:

Heartsong

Only they saw the waves
Only they saw the wind
as the houses collapsed
Only they dreamt of dreams
There were no birds
There were no trees
No hands to cover their eyes
No rain to record their footsteps
Only they saw their photos fading
into the walls
Only they saw their stories
hidden in the sounds of strangers
Only they
they stayed to tell us
they were never gone
they lay in their shadows
guarding their origin
their heart in every note
of every song
they stayed to tell us
there will always be
a heart in the sea
with our names

Nathalie Handal