#performing-arts

Amal Kassir: Fighting Injustice with Poetry "Why I'm a poet: 

I just want stories to be shared. All kinds of them. The kind that make you remember, the kind that a politician couldn't buy, the kind that don't require academic credibility or argument or a law degree or a large vocabulary. Stories like Homs' sunsets and my grandmothers dinner table and what walking through the desert did to your feet and how the glass felt when it hit your face and and getting stung by a jellyfish and how peaches taste from Spanish markets and swimming in Minnesotan summers and manaish from Lebanese bakeries and the smell of Chicago smog and the quiet of Detroit and it's so simple. It's so easy. We may have nothing in common, but I swear theres something in a story. Something in the silence of the listeners. Something that could solve all this, ballots wouldn't even be necessary. Veto wouldn't be necessary. Mass graves wouldn't be necessary. And it's big thinking for such a tiny voice. Im not trying to change the world. Im just trying to heal it. Tell me stories"

—Amal Kassir