Combining traditional Arabic verse-forms and free-verse, We Are Here to Stay some of his best-known poems about the Nakba, about life under military occupation, discrimination, imprisonment and land-seizures, as well as poems about family and love. Written with characteristic defiance, grace and wisdom.
This bilingual selection of poems by Tawfiq Zayyad will join Smokestack’s other poets from the Arab-speaking world – Amir Darwish (Syria), Chawki Abdelamir (Iraq), Anna Greki (Algeria) and Palestinian poets Ghassan Zaqtan, Reja-e Busailah and Farid Bitar, as well as Smokestack’s anthologies Poets and the Algerian War and A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry.