Over 600,000 children in Gaza are trapped in Rafah. There is nowhere safe for them to go.
All the poems in the exhibition Moon Tell Me Truth to be held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre from 23 May to 23 June 2024 were written and illustrated by children from Palestine aged 9-15. They were submitted as entries for the 2023 Hands Up Project international poetry competition and read by a panel of judges composed of artists, playwrights and leading figures in the world of ELT.
Hands Up Project founder Nick Bilbrough said: ‘Despite the extremely challenging conditions experienced by the young people in Gaza for the whole of their lives, they still manage to produce inspirational poetry, plays and stories in English.’
Tragically, most students featured in the exhibition are now displaced and their schools have been damaged or destroyed during the war on Gaza. Two students were killed by Israeli airstrikes in October 2023 – Obada Mohammad Abu Oda, 14, and Fatema Saidam, nine, whose illustrated poems will be featured in tribute.
The aim of the exhibition is to shine a spotlight on the extraordinary strength and courage of young people who know first-hand what it is like to live with violence, fear, uncertainty, and who have been traumatised while being torn from their homes, friends and schools. Many of the poems show that – even in the face of the most challenging adversity – resilience, creativity and their hopes and dreams for the future still exist within the hearts of young people.
Some of the poems and illustrations can be found here. Poets are asked to submit a poem responding to themes in the area of ‘resilience, creativity, hopes and dreams’, maximum 25 lines as a WORD document by 20 April to info@scottishpen.org. The aim is to have poems read at the exhibition opening, with the possibility of publication as an ‘inhouse’ pamphlet.