In the early hours of this morning, the Madleen a ship flying under a British flag and bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza, was illegally attacked and seized by the IDF. It's twelve-member crew abducted. I watched this taking place in real-time on my Instagram feed. While propaganda machines are calling this a 'selfie ship' and decrying the amount of aid that it carried as negligible, the fact remains that Madleen was sailing in international waters on a completely legal and peaceful humanitarian mission. Illegally boarding and seizing a ship, stealing the aid, and kidnapping its crew equates to piracy, yet another in the long list genocidal war crimes by the IDF.
While the Madleen may have been stopped in its tracks, this is not the end. I hope we are at the cusp of human murmuration. Right now, thousands from across the world are gathering to travel by foot from Cairo to Gaza on the 15th of June, for the Global March To Gaza. https://marchtogaza.net
For more info on Madleen and the Freedom Flotilla read here: https://freedomflotilla.org/2025/06/09/israeli-military-attacks-madleen-in-international-waters-weeks-after-bombing-of-conscience/
There is so much more I want to say, to rant, to rage, yet the words haven’t fully formed on the page.
Instead, I will share words that I wrote in 2024 as part of the Writing the Self module on the Creative Writing MA I’m currently completing. One of the exercises we had to do was keep a diary to be shared within the group and here’s an extract from an entry that I wrote:
Wednesday 14th February 2024 (content warning- contains graphic musing on genocide)
Night sweats at 4.30am.
I woke with a buzzing brain.
I know I shouldn’t look at my phone. Mostly I don’t. Today in my judgement-impaired-early-morning-haze-of 21st-century-internet addiction— I did.
The news is never good.
My stomach churned with deep concern for all the Palestinian civilians who have fled to Rafah… there isn’t enough food… there is nowhere left to go… a ground assault will result in more massacre… On Instagram I saw that a friend Becky had written and posted a poem about social media scrolling and Palestine.
The opening stanza read:
“I tried to look away but before I could,
I saw half a girl hanging by her clothes
on perhaps a nail on what was maybe a wall,
her legs not there below the knee.”
On Twitter (I will always refuse to call it X) I saw a post from @ArtsProfessional account stating:
“Arts Council England has updated its policies, warning that “political statements” made by individuals linked to an organisation can cause “reputational risk” breaching funding agreements…”
If it hadn’t been 4:30am and if Bill hadn’t been sleeping beside me, I might have thrown my phone, or raged at the screen.
For fuck’s sake… All art is political!
Dr Sabrin Hasbun had responded by posting these words by Marwan Makhoul:
“In order for me to write poetry that isn't political,
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent”
And how beautifully, how brilliantly, how succinctly, how artistically, how graciously, how humanely, how razor-sharply, how truthfully, Makhoul had put it.
That was February 2024, and over a year onwards our western governments still remain passive in the face of genocide.
Around the same time as that diary entry, I began working on this poem.
Birdseed
So, what’s the value of life in Gaza?
The woman on screen wails, there is no food.
Her neighbour has been eating donkey feed
but that’s running out, so now it’s birdseed.
Little birds fallen. Their wingspan severed.
Amputated from sky. All hope exiled.
She grinds granules with pestle and mortar,
salt tears seasoning, concocting the paste.
Children, barely surviving on birdseed.
Once she dreamed her babies would grow like chicks.
Plump little goslings with downy feathers
swathed in vast, plentiful rivers. Shielded.
Soaring through sunlight, their freedom singing.
So, just who wouldn’t want that for their children?
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