Ramallah – (A.M. Qattan Foundation – 31 January 2019):
In collaboration with the Mahmoud Darwish Museum, the Culture and Arts Programme (CAP) of the A.M. Qattan Foundation organised a launching ceremony of Snoring, the first poetry collection by Poetess Razan Bannourah. Poet Wasim Al-Kurdi introduced the collection of poems. Poet Fares Saba’neh moderated the literary evening.
Introducing Razan, Al-Kurdi said: “Razan is a modest young poetess. She is completely bewildered by any potential compliment of her texts. At the same time, Razan is a young woman who aspires to realise where she is on the poetry map in contemporary Palestine. Prowess is limitless in her texts, however. Under this layer of prowess, there is much modesty, fear, and confusion. But it is modesty, fear and confusion that sparkles from beneath, from above, from within, and on both sides. It is a challenge that is rightfully entitled to utter its words as they should be.”
Razan read out some poems of her collections:
They say that I run away
A lot
When I do not settle in a country
And I say
I hide from myself.
I think of committing suicide
When I commit heinous things
Or when I do none of them.
I say: I dream a lot
They say
They only hear
My snoring.
On Tuesday, 22 January 2019, CAP had also organised a launching ceremony of Wings, a novel by Ru’a al-Shish, at the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah. Journalist Nida Awine moderated the event.
Both literary works were highly appreciated and recommended for publication by the jury of the Young Writer of the Year Award 2017 (YWYA 17). Organised by the CAP since 2000, YWYA offers a first prize in each of the novel, poetry, and short story categories. YWYA also publishes winning literary works as well as those recommended by the YWYA jury.
In its statement on Bannourah’s collection Snoring, the YWYA 17 jury said: “This collection unveils a tremendous capability of discovering poetry in everything, even in that which seems to resist it. It involves high poetics that deconstructs and reconstructs everything in wonderful poems, which effectively combine quiet meditation and insurgence. In a proper, transparent and ascetic language, sensitivity drives the reader through the commonplace to surprising consequences.”
On the other hand, the YWYA 17 jury stated that Wings “is grounded in a fertile, fantastic and amazing fictionalisation. It addresses the dichotomy of good and evil in a style that is affluent, open to the human, and transient through the times and places. The novel adopts three narrative tracks, which at first glance appear as if dispersed, but are soon entwined together through a very clever and confident management. With this entwinement, enchanting and convincing tragic characters are revealed, presenting a profound and enlivening dialogue.”
Al-Shish was born in 1992 to a refugee family that had been displaced from the Beit Attab village, Jerusalem, in 1948. She is a resident of the Bethlehem city. In 2015, Al-Shish obtained a BA degree in Business Administration from the Palestine Ahliya University.
Bannourah was also born in Bethlehem, where she lives and practices law. In 2015, she obtained a BA in Law from the Palestine Ahliya University. Bannourah has published many poems and stories in local and Arab newspapers and magazines, both in print and online.
In the last edition of YWYA, the CAP published another four literary works: (1) Mr. Blue in the Cinema, a short story collection by Ahmed Jaber; (2) Traces Paint Feet behind Them, a short story collection by the late young story writer Muhannad Younes; (3) The Funeral of a Juggler, a poetry collection by Poet Anis Ghuneimah; and (4) Wounds that Experiment Themselves, a poetry collection by Poet Hamed Ashour. Jaber and Ghuneimah won the YWYA 17 for the short story and poetry categories.