We are pleased to welcome the Lebanese-Palestinian poet Hasib Hourani to read from his debut collection of poetry, a set of  poetic sequences concerned with Palestine’s occupation. The collection, rock flight is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Winter 2024, published by Prototype. His book also appears with Giramondo in Australia and, soon, with New Directions in the US.

rock flight is a book-length poem that follows a personal and historical narrative to compose an understated yet powerful allegory of Palestine’s occupation. The poem uses refrains of suffocation, rubble, and migratory bird patterns to address  forced displacement, economic restrictions and surveillance technology that Palestinians face both within and outside Palestine. It depicts a restlessness brought about by dispossession, and a determination to find significance in fleeting objects and fragments. Formally claustrophobic, rock flight morphs into irony, declaring everything a box while refusing to exist within one.

Lila Matsumoto is the author of Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water, a Poetry Society Recommendation published by Prototype in 2021. Lila’s other publications include the poetry collection Urn & Drum (Shearsman, 2018) and the chapbooks Soft Troika (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2016) and Allegories from my Kitchen (Sad Press, 2015). She teaches poetry and creative-critical writing at the University of Nottingham and plays in the bands Food People and Cloth. Her website is: lilamatsumoto.com

In association with Creative Australia and Prototype

Refreshments included