Brooklyn Bedouin
a poetic pilgrimage into the art of the Arabic language
where poetry is lived.
Inspired by the history of Little Syria & the first writers who left the homeland for their literary freedom, ‘Brooklyn Bedouin’ holds a collective space of writing, learning, and experimental encounters with our native poetry.
In this space where history and the present intertwine, the jars of our liberated ink mix together. I too have had to leave home and the tribe for the freedom to create, to live, to dare. And when I moved to Brooklyn, I could feel the presence of the ones who came before me, opening to receive my own migration.
Our shared hunger merges, our collective longing for home meets the other in a ceremony of intense creation. Our words are without borders; we cross into each other’s time without visas, without permission.
We keep one eye on the homeland, and one eye here — on our scattered tribe and their untold stories. We are wounded and wounding, emancipated and caged in what we won’t see, what we won’t change.
This project honors the work of the first writers who came here, who understood that the diasporic community needed their attention, their truths, their unfiltered examination. It is with this same intention that Brooklyn Bedouin was created.
