What's the point of writing poetry when Gaza is dying?
Review: Writer Karim Kattan, who was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Bethlehem, and now lives in France, has published the collection of poems "Hortus Conclusus." A pilgrimage through gardens around the world haunted by the presence/absence of Palestine.
By Doan Bui
Writer Karim Kattan in Paris, January 11, 2025. REBECCA TOPAKIAN
To go further
"It occurs to me that poems and gardens reciprocally engender one another: gardens were composed as illustrations to poems and poems as a commentary on gardens." Opening at random "Collections of Sand" (1984) by the Italian Italo Calvino, and in particular an essay devoted to a trip to Japan, I did not expect to find this perfect echo of "Hortus Conclusus," the magnificent collection of poems by the Palestinian writer Karim Kattan published this spring by l'Extrême Contemporain, an author whose novel "Eden at Dawn" (Elyzad, 2024) we had already loved. But there are secret correspondences between books and writers, who don't care about borders. Their words are like birds: they soar high in the sky and flout checkpoints.
Geography always catches up with Karim Kattan. That's how it is when you're an exile, when you're far from your "Dar," that magic word that means home/family/door in Palestine: biography always mixes with geography, dates with places. In Arabic, the word "biography" is related to the word "translation": it takes us between spaces and languages, the time of history and history. Der…
Article reserved for subscribers.
Log inWant to read more?
All our articles in full from €1
Or
Le Nouvel Observateur
