"A Date With A literary Scholar"

He is a great in poetry but really down to earth. He is teaching in English Literature. He is from Gaza. Who is he?

Refaat Alareer. Yes, a bit difficult to pronounce his name yet it is still a unic name. He is from Gaza, a literary scholar. I got a chance to meet this cool person in my class, for BBL 3406 and he suppose to give a talk and he did it very well! One thing I love about him when he says he is not a poet but he loves poem in deep. Lets go through about his talk on that day, 21/10/2013.

He began his talk with the introduction of Palestine, the background, culture and so on. He is even show the map of Palestine. He told how Palestine before and after the attacking of Israel. Then, he talked about Mahmoud Darwish, Tamim Bargouti who wrote the poem in Arabic but being translated into English.

Mr Refaat also gave share with us on how to be a good writer or poet. 

There are five techniques:

•   Read a lot of good and high quality poetry.

        You have to read a lot, and be influenced by the high quality poetry.

• .          Believe that you can write good stuff.

        Always believe what you can achieve and be confidence with your abilities

• .          Have the will to do so.

        You need to have the encourage to do so and the most important thing, be sincere.

• .          Scribble your thoughts.  Always

        You have to think out of board and broaden your mind. Connect one thing to our surrounding.

• .          Imitate.

        You don’t have to spend a specific time to get the good idea for your writing. You can get it everywhere       as long as you are alert. For example, you go to the café, hang out with your friends and you see an               incident. Next, you imitate the incident and relate it with your life. So, you get the idea from that and you       can start to write and elaborate your idea. That’s it!

Poetry by Refaat Alareer

There are 5 poems that have been read by him on that day consists of “If I must die”, “Over the wall”, “And we live on”, “I am you”, and last but not least, “Freshly baked souls”. I love this session because he touched my heart with the way how he recites all the poems. He read them so heartedly and he put soul on his reading. My favourite one is when he read “If I must die”. I almost cried because when he read the poem, it seems like I was in Palestine and I got the message. He convey the message very well. I must say this, he is great and I salute him.

“If I must die” by Refaat Alareer

For me, it is really heart-breaking poem. Setting in Palestine and written in sad mood are enough to show the violence happened in Gaza. Even though, they still have the hope based on the last two line “Let it bring hope”. The line “If I die, you must live” tell us not to give up so easily. If a person died because of the attacking, someone must continue the fighting to show that they are not the weak person who will give up easily. I agree with that because as for me, “Strong people are stand for themselves, but stronger person are stand for others”.

Mr Refaat also shares what is in his poetry. It concludes three things which are dialogue, performances and Palestine.

Last but not least, we did QA session with him.

1.       Who is your favourite poet?

I love John Donne. I like the way he write his poems.  I do hope that I will be able to do my PHD research on him.

2.       What was Gaza look like before the attacking took place?

The society has a simple life and the most obvious thing is, they love to plant. Education is still relevant during that time.

To sum up, I learned a lot of new things from him and it was a great talk and I wish I can meet him again. J