April 24, 2024, 12:03pm
Mosab Abu Toha—the Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was forced to flee Gaza with his family back in December—is set to release a new collection of poems this fall.
According to the announcement made on Publishers Marketplace earlier today, Forest of Noise (the poet’s second collection, after 2022’s Things You May Find in My Ear) is “a collection of poems about life in Gaza and Palestine under Israeli bombardment, including odes to family, elegies to those who have not survived, lyrics to the moon, and remembrances of a life lived fully there,” and will be released by Knopf in October 2024.
Abu Toha—whose poems, tweets, and dispatches from Gaza have given millions of readers a window into the horror of life under Israeli bombardment—was kidnapped by Israeli forces on November 19th while trying to enter Egypt at the Rafah checkpoint. He was carrying his three-year-old son Mustafa at the time. After being beaten, interrogated, and stripped of his possessions, Abu Toha was released two days later. In early December, Abu Toha, his wife, and their three young children made it across the border to Egypt, though his parents, siblings, nieces and nephews remained trapped in the besieged enclave.
Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Public Library, the first English-language library in Gaza.
Ilya Kaminsky, the Ukrainian-Jewish-American poet and author of Deaf Republic, has called Forest of Noise “heartbreaking, evocative, transformative poetry of witness to the horror of warfare.”
Naomi Shihab Nye, the Palestinian-American poet, songwriter, and novelist, has said of Abu Toha: “[He] is the essential poet embodying the humanity of Gaza.”
