Samih Al-Qasim: A poet resisting on many fronts

By Khalid Mahmoud

Renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim, born in Az-Zarqa in northern Jordan in 1939, has passed away after a long battle with cancer last month, on 19 August. His Palestinian contemporaries were Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) and Tawfiq Ziyad (1929-1994).

Al-Qasim, a prominent poet in the Palestinian and Arab arenas, as well as internationally, was subjected to detention and house arrests by the Israeli authorities, and was fired from work.