Defend by Sheena Hussain, after Simon Armitage

The Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2024 Entry
Poet’s Biography
Sheena Hussain is a poet, writer, and essayist. No Thanks, a creative non-fiction was shortlisted for the inaugural Curae Prize 2023. Watching a Green Fly was longlisted for the Leeds Poetry Festival Competition 2022. She is a member of Inscribe-Peepal Tree Press's writer's development programme and the founder of Poem:99 a children's poetry competition. When she is not writing she loves taking long solitary walks.
Poem Description / Inspiration
Simon Armitage's poem Resistance initially inspired this piece. As poets we should have the freedom to document the ugly realities of life, such as war and genocide without the fear of being censored. It beggars belief that the cruel genocide and occupation still remains at large. Resistance and the right to Defend is a legitimate aim. We must never forget what happened to the indigenous people of Gaza. Perhaps it's the poets, through writing poetry who will help bring about peace-​ I hope so, I pray.
Poem Text
After Simon Armitage
It’s Nakba again: comes in waves
often without warning, always
with warfare.
1.1 million leaflets scatter like rain
move/migrate/displace
(ethnic cleansing: never again).
Women clutch pillows, floral bedding
on mounted mules, carry a
load of seven decades and half.
It’s Nakba again: 1948, remember?
What was learnt, if not how to
repeat catastrophe as if a sad song?
An ambulance is firing smoke
saving the saved, a duty suddenly
smashed point-blank.
No ceasefire here: no round table of men
in suits, no fresh accords,
which country will sit for peace?
Blocks of flats buckle in an already
narrow lane. Shifa is bleeding,
ice cream vans freeze the dead.
It’s Nakba again: morning stale breath, a kitten
survives an onslaught
this is a gaping hell hole
A boy, 11 I think, pink t-shirt
sharp as knife strikes the lens
Where are the Arabs? Where...?
Propaganda is bias,
is enemy, is white phosphorous illegal?
It’s a long war again:
night sky holds flickering embers of light
a masjid is toppled, Allahu
Akbar is all the sustenance they have.
This poem first appeared in Swerve Magazine 3.