Edmund Ghareeb and Samar Najia discuss Enemy of the Sun and the enduring power of Palestinian resistance poetry

The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development is pleased to host a special conversation on Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance, the landmark anthology edited by Edmund Ghareeb and the late Naseer Aruri.

First published in 1970 and newly reissued, Enemy of the Sun brought Palestinian resistance poetry into English for a wider audience at a crucial historical moment. More than half a century later, the anthology speaks with renewed urgency. Its poems bear witness to dispossession, exile, endurance, and the struggle to preserve both language and memory under conditions oferasure. This event will explore the anthology not only as a literary collection, but also as a document of political and cultural history.

The conversation will reflect on the place of poetry in Palestinian public life, the work of translation, and the enduring power ofliterature to travel across generations and across struggles. It will also consider the wider histories of solidarity that shaped thebook’s circulation, including its connections to Black political and intellectual life in the United States.Dr. Edmund Ghareeb will speak about the making and afterlife of the anthology, its historical context, and the significance ofbringing it back into circulation today. He will be joined by Samar Najia, Palestinian American poet and writer, whose work on memory, diaspora, and inheritance opens a compelling path into the continued life of Palestinian poetry in the present.

The evening will include readings from selected poems, followed by a conversation and audience Q&A. Join us for a timely discussion on poetry, translation, resistance, and the ways Palestinian cultural expression continues to illuminate both history and the present.