“for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"

Wis³awa Szymborska (born in 1923) is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. Honoured by the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 and by numerous other awards, she is generally considered the most important living Polish poet. In Poland, her books reach sales rivalling prominent prose authors — although she once remarked in a poem entitled "Some like poetry" [Niektorzy lubi¹ poezje] that no more than two out of a thousand people care for the art.

Szymborska frequently employs literary devices, such as irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to illuminate underlying philosophical themes and obsessions. Szymborska is a miniaturist, whose compact poems often conjure large existential puzzles. Although most of Szymborska's poems are barely a page in length, they often touch on issues of ethical import, reflecting on the condition of Man both as individual and member of human society. Szymborska's style is marked by intellectual introspection, wit, and a succinct and stylish choice of words.

Szymborska's reputation rests on a relatively small body of work: she has not published more than 250 poems. As a person, she is often described as modest to the point of shyness. Long cherished by her Polish literary contemporaries (including Czes³aw Mi³osz), Szymborska became much better known in international circles after her 1996 Nobel Prize. Szymborska's work has been translated into many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.

"I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet."

"We should not justify suicide bombers. We are against the suicide bombers, but we must understand what drives these young people to such actions. They want to liberate themselves from such a dark life. It is not ideological, it is despair."

Mahmoud Darwish (born 1941 in Al-Birwah, Palestine) is a contemporary Palestinian poet and writer of prose. He has published over thirty volumes of poetry, eight books of prose and has served as the editor of several publications, including: Al-jadid, Al-fajr, Shu'un filistiniyya and Al-Karmel. He is internationally recognized for his poetry, which focuses on his strong affection for his lost homeland. His work has won numerous awards, and has been published in at least twenty-two languages. The majority of his work has not been translated into English.

In the 1960s, Darwish joined the official Communist Party of Israel, the Rakah, but he is better known for his active work within the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation). Once a member of PLO Executive Committee, he resigned from the Committee and broke with the PLO in 1993 to protest the continuation of the Oslo Accords.

Sarid, who was Israel's education minister, suggested in March 2000 that some of Darwish's poems should be included in the Israeli high school curriculum. But Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared, "Israel is not ready."

photo Phil Gyford

The above poem from Fewer Roses (1986) is by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

He Embraced His Murderer

He embraces his murderer. May he win his heart: Do you feel angrier if I survive?
Brother...My brother! What did I do to make you destroy me?
Two birds fly overhead. Why don't you shoot upwards? What do you say?
You grew tired of my embrace and my smell. Aren't you just as tired of the fear within me?
Then throw your gun in the river! What do you say?
The enemy on the riverbank aim his machine gun at an embrace? Shoot the enemy!
Thus we avoid the enemy's bullets and keep from falling into sin.
What do you say? You'll kill me so the enemy can go to our home
and descend again into the law of the jungle?
What did you do with my mother's coffee, with your mother's coffee?
What crime did I commit to make your destroy me?
I will never cease embracing you.