Language: English
Looking away from war – you too?
What responsibility do we in our (for now) safe, Western Europe have towards our fellow human beings in war zones? Why are we so quickly distracted from suffering and scroll on to smiling otters and trendy knitting patterns on instagram? Do we not care? Or do we feel powerless?
Lisa Weeda’s book Dans Dans Revolutie makes looking away from war impossible. Because of her Ukrainian ancestry (which Weeda explores in her book Aleksandra), she is deeply connected to the country and the horrors that continue there to this day. But living in the Netherlands, she knows: we only sympathize with the people there up to a certain point. At some point, we just turn on Netflix again anyway. The same goes for Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun, who fears for his family’s life every day. His calls for compassion and justice for the Palestinian people are met not only with shrugs of shoulders, but sometimes even outright exclusion and censorship. Oppression in free Europe, you might say. His poetic lyrics are raw and ragged. He puts the war in your lap, where you have to look at it.
Weeda and Almadhoun will be interviewed by Chris Keulemans, author of the recently published book Verzet, containing stories about people who rise up against injustice, sometimes even against their better judgment.
Lisa Weeda is a Dutch-Ukrainian writer, literary programmer, theater maker, and virtual reality director. Text is always the basis of her work, but the form is free. Ukraine, her grandmother’s homeland, is often at the center of her work. In recent years, this area has been growing and eastern and central Europe have been seeping into Lisa’s work more and more.
Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet who was born in Damascus in 1979 and relocated to Sweden in 2008. He writes poetry in Arabic and his work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Almadhoun has published five books of poetry, the latest being I Brought You a Severed Hand in 2024.