Farah Chamma: Blurring Borders Through Poetry – Review

Farah Chamma Rise. Image Credit: Bob Mitchell.

It is regrettable that, for one reason or another, I have not managed to engage with much of what the York poetry collective Say Owt has been doing, especially as I have known Henry Raby for most of my time in the northern poetry scene through his involvement at Chapel FM. Even at the Leeds LitFest, when I was literally in the room as they were setting up, I had to make my apologies and head out to other commitments.

Everyone I have ever spoken to about them says their events are magnificent and inclusive. They also have a political edge, platforming important Palestinian poets who bring us vital real-world perspectives from that region. Those of you who read my Manthology column last Christmas will know that I found myself supporting Mohammed Moussa, founder of the Gazan Poets Society, in Scarborough at the end of November. It was Say Owt who had brought him over to tour.

On 1st July, at Bluebird Bakery, they showcased another important Palestinian voice: Farah Chamma, a magnificent performance poet, and so much more. This is a young, much-travelled polyglot who performs in Arabic, French and English. She also speaks Spanish and Portuguese, picked up during her time in Brazil, where she formed an electronic music duo called Chamaeleon. She studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne and Performance at Goldsmiths, and continues to study drama and performance at the Performing Arts Academy in Sharjah. She has performed at events and festivals all around the world. 

She came onstage after a fantastic poetry set from Henry himself, and a brilliant polyphonic storytelling duo, Adderstone, who would later accompany Farah with some of their more unusual instruments, of which they had several!

Physically compact – small, sinewy and sensuous in her movement and projection – Farah performs with fluidity and intelligence, and is unashamedly female, gay, queer and resistant to oppression. Hers is a voice which reminds you that Gaza has perspectives far more diverse and modern than the stereotypes peddled by their opponents, and the importance of listening to them.

She is not merely eloquent and articulate, but knows whereof she speaks. Her command of languages goes beyond the ability to speak several; she understands their hierarchies, too. She tells us when she is moving from Palestinian Arabic to Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic), and why that shift matters.

Mohammed Moussa is also eloquent and articulate, but he has a far dryer, earnest approach. He bears witness to the objective reality we all see, asking us to look at it and believe our own eyes and ears. Farah explores things in a more abstract way, teasing at the edges by exploring the nature not just of language, but of borders, of religion, of movement, of sex and of the body. Despite the horror of what she is resisting with her performances, she even uses humour, sometimes to the point of silliness. It is as if every boundary must be blurred so we can imagine a world with fewer of them.

After being introduced as having the world’s “coolest Instagram page”, she spins a rousing poetic yarn about a teacher in Gaza who, when a drone hovers near his classroom, tunes into it and streams a song of joy, love and peace with his students, sending it back to their tormentors. Already the dryness of eyes in the room faces a serious challenge. 

Yet silliness is never far away. She tells us she has come “dressed in her cleavage” today and that if 1 of our years is 7 cat years, the arithmetic is “the same for lesbians”. The same voice that is heart-wrenchingly sensuous in ‘Dictator’: 

I will love you more when the world is burning.

I will mourn as you moan at the back of my neck…

When cities are falling like corpses,

I will hold on to your body

Digging nails into your back

is as daft as a brush when talking about feng shui: I needed a finger up my arse, so I could move shit about.

She lurches across the performance area to tell us a story of shifting people, borders and geopolitics:

We jump from one city to another

like two balloons in the rain

from Beirut to Haifa

on a train in the 1930s

then to Mesopotamia – in front of the BBC

we think of all the borders that could

stop the rain from getting a visa.

We will keep warm with: love,

music, poetry, kindness

She goes on to tell us how dialects, such as her Palestinian one, are colonised, how people are given “the wrong language”, how the coloniser wants us to forget, because memory is a weapon. She tells us how the “h” in her name Farah has a guttural pronunciation and sounds like pain, how in Palestinian Arabic, even happiness hurts. 

At the end, despite the lateness of the hour, she tirelessly signed pamphlets and posters, posed for photographs, and accompanied these duties with unfailing smiles and affection. A lot of us on the poetry circuit are pretty tactile, but she must have embraced every person in the room at least twice. If I felt like I was the only person in the room who mattered to her when we spoke, I expect everyone else must have felt the same in their turn. The message throughout was clear: the antidote to hatred…is love.

***

You can keep up to date with Farah’s work on her website and instagram. 

For the latest poetry slams, workshops, open-mics, gigs, and performance events from Say Owt, check out their website.