In Fall 2024, students from Gaza, Rohingya refugee camps, MIT and Harvard joined our five-session poetry workshop series called Poetry of the Camps.
Poetry of the Camps is an initiative run by Illuminated Cities, She Is Night, and local partners to connect students in refugee camps with students in the US through poetry.
What were our sessions like? Imagine students from Gaza reading poetry written for them by students from Rohingya refugee camps. Imagine students from MIT and Harvard receiving poetry from Gaza in the voices of the students themselves. We read about genocides across coast lines, we read about everlasting hope. Each poem affirmed that every one of these students is a miracle.
Through this program, students reflected on several key themes and wrote poems which we shared in an intimate poetry recital. The themes of the sessions were: Miracle Poems, Colorism, Homeland, Love Letters to Palestine, and finally, Freedom–Huriye–Azadi.
A “miracle poem” is a poem in which you speak about yourself as a miracle. Believing that you are a miracle, particularly in a context that prefers to see you dead or departed, means declaring your existence as integral and intentional. Believing you are a miracle comes with a sense of importance not rooted in ego or arrogance, but rather held by the certainty of Divine love in the face of violence.
Something incredible and powerful begins to alchemize when a miracle poem is recited aloud, shared in the context of a community, and placed out into the expansive arms of our world. It can bring each of us closer to freedom.
