The Message from Gaza: From Blog to Book

Professor Dr. Said Abdelwahed is one of the three bloggers at Moments of Gaza who have been providing on-the-ground news and observations from Gaza since December 2008. Dr. Abdelwahed's blogs struck a chord with Mari Oka, professor of Islamic and Middle East studies at Kyoto University, who translated and collected the posts into a book just published by Sedosha in Tokyo. Dr. Abdelwahed notes that

The Message from Gaza was the first book to document part of the war on Gaza from inside!

The swift transition from blog to book, and from English to Japanese, is distinctive evidence of the internet's potential to change the shape of journalism and publishing towards inclusion, polyphony and democratisation, while retaining high standards of reportage.

"Poetry in Iraq is people's life"

Thanks to Ron Silliman (2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere) for the link to this curious human interest story from The Boston Globe, about a US contractor, John Dunlop, who co-organised a poetry competition with Saad Shaker, an Iraqi arts professor in Rashid.

Dunlop said Shaker explained to him the enormous importance of poetry in Iraqi society, not just as an art form, but as a way of communicating in religion, politics, and love, "We started to talk about how we could promote poetry as an art form, and he said, 'How about a poetry contest?' "

So the embedded civil-military development team helped Shaker's group set up the competition, with small prizes of plates or other mementos. Over the past month, four preliminary rounds were held, with more than 100 poets reading their works at each gathering in Rashid neighborhoods, including one drawing 350 people. The final was held yesterday at the Assyrian Hall in Rashid, and more than 200 people turned out for it, Dunlop said.

As a comment on the legitimacy of the US invasion of Iraq, or on the depth and riches of Iraqi literature, it's a little infuriating (and the comments are balanced between people with warmed cockles and people with flames of rage coming out of their heads), but it does convey something amazing about the importance of poetry -- best put by

Dhafer Al Makuter, an Iraqi translator who has worked with Dunlop since last August, said the importance of poetry to Iraqis can't be overstated. "It's like McDonald's to Americans. Poetry is for when you pray or go to the circus. Everything in Iraq is done with poetry. Today we bought some tractors for Iraqi farmers. A poet was hired to read poetry to the guests at the ceremony for almost an hour. Poetry in Iraq is people's life."

"Like McDonald's to Americans": as a manifesto for poetry's place in public life, heartening and terrifying in equal measures.

PEN Atlas: Site of the Week

Thanks to the Guardian's Books Blog for calling us their Site of the Week, and drawing particular attention to our Voices from Gaza feature running throughout this month.

Welcome to the Blogging Revolution

Following the publication of a number of influential blooks from the Middle East, including those by Salam Pax and Riverbend, Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein has collected together interviews with bloggers based in repressive regimes in his book The Blogging Revolution, which he's been talking about on SBS Radio Arabic and in today's Guardian. He asserts that citizen journalism and new media publishing can literally change the world, by providing freedom of information from within countries where media is closely state-controlled, and can allow internet users around the world to make connections with one another.

With the Online World Atlas, PEN hopes to become part of that revolution -- not least because good-news stories like Loewenstein's are balanced by increasingly frequent site closures and arrests of bloggers such as Moroccan Mohammed Erraji. The blogging revolution - like all change - needs _you_: send us links to news stories, new publications, great blogs, good books and interesting discussions.

As Loewenstein points out, "Allowing people to speak and write for themselves without a western filter is one of the triumphs of blogging. The online culture, disorganised and disjointed in its aims, is unlike that of any previous social movement." Like international blog collector sites Global Voices and The Literary Saloon, or Syrian aggregator al-mudawen, the World Atlas blog collects some of the new voices being heard in this fertile landscape -- and we want you to add yours.