Literary Creation as a Vector of Resilience in the Face of Genocide
18 November 2026. From 18:30 | Conference | English | IEMedReversing the Gaze and Rethinking Euro-Mediterranean Relations
“At a moment of the war in Gaza when I had lost absolutely everything, I wondered: how can a poet survive? I thought words lacked value while missiles fell upon us. I wondered what words could do at that moment, while death surrounded me and the entire world kept silent in the face of the war in Gaza.
But poetry saved me. It opened a door for me to imagination and beauty. It told me: «Alaa, if you keep writing, it means that you are still alive, that your heart is still beating, and that there is a sky without warplanes waiting for you, so that your words can fly in it».
That window of hope that poetry opened for me made me understand to what extent literature is necessary in times of war. And not only that, but also to what extent a poet who continues to write with a bleeding heart can inspire all of humanity, and how their poem can save human beings from desolation.”
A lecture by the Palestinian poet Alaa al Qatrawi, who was born in Gaza and studied at the Islamic University of Gaza, where she completed a licentiate, a master’s degree and a PhD in Arabic literature (2022), with a doctoral thesis offering a semiological study of the work of the poet Adonis.
She has worked as an Arabic-language teacher in UNRWA schools, as well as a language editor and writer of educational content, and has contributed to the production of educational programmes. In the media, she has worked as a radio host, particularly on literary and poetry programmes. She was selected for the PAUSE programme, which hosts threatened intellectuals and researchersl. Today, she lives in France.
She is the author of several poetry collections, including When the Air Trembles, 2021, The Birds Steal My Bread, 2022, A Tent in the Sky, 2025, and The Butterfly’s Ascent (2026), as well as the prose work From Distance Zero-Letters under War (2015, with Rana al Ali). Her honours include the Souad al Sabah Prize for Palestinian Creativity (2025), the Abdulaziz Saud al Babtain Poetry Prize (2022), the Antoine Sadé Literary Prize (2025), the Khalifa Award (2025), the Fadwa Touqan Poetry Prize (2024). In 2025, Lebanese musician Marcel Khalifé dedicated a song to her. In December 2026, Edicions UB will publish a collection of her poetry.
A session of the Aula Mediterrània lecture series 2026-2027 moderated by Abdallah Tagourramt El Kbaich, Lecturer at the Department of Classical, Romance and Semitic Philology (Universitat de Barcelona, UB) and co-organised with the Master’s Degree in Construction and Representation of Cultural Identities, UB.
Language of the session: Arabic (with simultaneous translation).
Speakers
Abdallah Tagourramt El Kbaich
Lecturer, Department of Classical, Romance and Semitic PhilologyProfessor and Jean Monnet Chair, IBEI Universitat de BarcelonaOrganised by
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