This is an interview with Julio Mas Alcaraz about the reading of “Si tengo que morir” by Refaat Alareer in the voices of 100 poets in Madrid, Spain.
Inside the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid, Spain, we find Pablo Picasso’s iconic painting, La Guernica, painted between the months of May and June 1937. The work evokes the tragic and dehumanized bombing that occurred on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. In the same month of June, but 87 years later, a group of 100 poets gathered outside the museum to read together the poem Si he de morir by the poet Refaat Alareer. Among the prominent poets, there was the participation of Rosana Acquaroni, Juan Carlos Mestre, María Ángeles Pérez López, Francisco Caro, Paco Moral, Manuela Temporelli, Antonio Crespo Massie, Raúl Nieto de la Torre and Javier Gil Martín.
Refaat Alareer was killed on 6 December 2023, aged 44, along with his brother, sister and four of his nephews, in an IDF attack. Days before, he posted on Twitter his already famous poem If I Must Die. Refaat wrote in English with the purpose of reaching out to the world and educating people about Palestine. What he did not predict was that his death would be a source of fecundity, not only because his work has become viral on social networks, but also because of the huge amount of translations into different languages.
But what do we do as poets in the face of the incomprehensible dehumanizing attitude of those who seek to silence the cry of the wretched, who cry without feeling heard by a god blinded by the trails of bombs, leading them away from their comfort? What to do before a human being who mortgages his heart, turning it into stone, to please a world increasingly divided in ideological positions, which separate us in adjectives, imposing themselves on the noun ‘person’, By sinking it into the rubble of fallen buildings and hiding the most terrifying cry of all: that of children? What to do in the face of so much barbarism? What to do when the written word and the said word have been torn from the hands and lips of its author? Being a crowd, because, in the pure style of Walt Whitman, I am large, I contain multitudes; we are extensive and we are multitudes, we are a community where the verses are all of us, because our profession is to write as if nothing belongs to us. We do not seek to master language, but that the human experience, especially that of pain, is compensated with new and more human meanings, with new realities which, through a community construction, generate an alternative to the dominant language of war, the destruction, humiliation and barbarity of man against man.
No, they could not take the word from Refaat Alareer, they could not silence him, because his If I die not only keeps him alive, but has endowed us with more life, has given more reality to the reality generated by our verses, and has given new and deeper meanings to words.
The filmmaker and poet Julio Más Alcaraz was the one who took the initiative and shaped this crowd, calling us on June 16 at 11:00 in the morning outside the Reina Sofía Museum to read If I Die. A feeling of caress was expanding in the atmosphere; during the 54 seconds that the reading of the poem lasted, we were, in some way, that hand which shook the dust of the fallen buildings and the bombs, allowing love to lay its gaze again on this suffering town. We were the verses made neighbor, we were skin of hugs, shelter of the oppressed. We were therefore a presence.
Very good, Julio. Tell us, what led you to organize a memorial event for the Palestinian poet and activist Refaat Alareer outside the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, gathering more than 100 poets who have read together the poem “Si tengo que morir”?
The main motivation for organizing the memorial of Refaat Alareer was both a matter of poetic justice and conscience. Refaat, as a writer and activist, was a crucial voice in making the suffering of the Palestinian people visible. His death was also a symbol of the unbearable pain of a people and why it deserves to be described as genocide. It is important to remember that in the attack in which Refaat dies, his brother, sister and four of his nephews also die. Refaat had just written «If I die» in which he passed the witness of his voice to his daughter Shaima in the event that he died. After a few months, the Israeli army also killed Shaima, Shaima’s newborn son and his son-in-law. Such blind violence, such fascist execution, so profoundly anti-Jewish and in its disrespect for the sacred texts, cannot but be answered and remembered.
Gathering more than 100 poets to read «If I shall die» in unison was an act of solidarity to give a voice to those who were killed for giving a voice to their people. In addition, doing it outside the Reina Sofía Museum added an important cultural load because we were able to connect recent historical memory with art and poetry as vehicles for reflection and social change.
In addition, a few months before we had held a poetic marathon in which more than 40 cities and more than one thousand poets intervened, and in which a diptych with the poem of Refaat was distributed. I think the tribute to him was well deserved, and it is actually a tribute to a whole people.
The subsequent reading included poems by several Palestinian poets, such as Suheir Hammad, Yabra Ibrahim Yabra, Fadwa Tuqan, among others. What role do you think poetic language plays in a war territory? If it has any utility, what impact can poetry written in war zones have in contexts far removed from that reality, such as what happens in Gaza?
Poetic language in a war context is a tool of resistance and humanization. Where weapons attempt to erase life and memory, poetry becomes a refuge from the human, a way of preserving dignity, conscience and spirit. In places like Gaza, poetry can serve to keep alive the identity and memory that will later become part of history even amid devastation. By taking these poems to other contexts, outside the reality of war, such as Madrid, it is possible that the experience of suffering and struggle of a people is not confined to its territory, but connects with a global consciousness, Raising awareness of the urgency of these realities among other audiences.
In the context of this interview, your poem “A child whom I look on as I flee” acquires a very powerful meaning (it is part of “Ritual del laberinto”, a book itself which was marked by the experience of war, namely that of the Spanish civil war). The first verses say so: The wings of angels are already dry tree branches and/ orphans look impatiently for the drawing of a mother, and continues with: The smallest finds a drawn mother on the ground/ and lies down next to her. / Rain cannot erase it. This poem is deeply shuddering when read in light of the events in Gaza. What do you think about the role of the poem as an object capable of generating, in the midst of the multiplicity of meanings, a common language more human in a world full of dehumanizing narratives?
The poem “A Child Whom I Watch While Fleeing” has universal and timeless significance in its connection with children’s suffering and war, although it was originally written thinking of the Spanish Civil War. Reading it in the context of Gaza, what I try to convey is that through poetry, you can generate links that bring together human suffering in different spaces and times. This type of poem invites to feel the pain of the other and, although the contexts vary, the act of creating poetic images that evoke loss and hope is a way to combat the dehumanizing narratives that often predominate in war situations. Poetry has the power to restore some humanity in a world that seems bent on the opposite.
In addition to the act itself, with the mass recitation of Refaat’s poem in unison, this type of initiative also has a fundamental impact on the subsequent scope, which in this case was related to the dissemination of audiovisual material, both the multiple recitation and the subsequent recitation of the other Palestinian poets. Tell us how you think that reach has been and how it relates in this particular case to your work as an audiovisual director as well as a poet.
The dissemination of audiovisual material is key in initiatives such as this. In such an interconnected world, reach is not limited to those who were physically present, but expands through social media and other digital platforms. As an audiovisual producer and poet, my goal is that this kind of acts do not stay only in a moment, but resonate beyond. Each image, each excerpt from the recitations can reach thousands of people, touching sensitivities and fostering empathy. Poetry and the audiovisual, taken together, have the capacity to break the media silence that is suffering genocide and to bring a message of resistance and humanity to a very wide audience.
IF I AM TO DIE
If I should die,
you have to live
to tell my story,
to sell my things,
to buy a piece of cloth
and some ropes,
(Make white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza,
as the sky is reflected in his eyes,
He waited for his father, who departed in a blaze
and did not say goodbye to anyone,
not even of his flesh,
not even of himself -
see the kite, the kite you made me, flying up there
and think for a moment that there is an angel
That restores love.
If I should die,
that it brings hope,
Let it be a story.
Julio Mas Alcaraz is a poet, filmmaker and translator. As a poet he published "Cría del ser humano" (2005), "El niño que beía agua de brújula" (2011, Calambur), a book that was selected by El Cultural of the newspaper El Mundo as one of the five best poetry books of the year. In 2021 he published "Ritual del laberinto" (Bartleby), a finalist book for the National Critics' Prize and the Valencian Critics' Prize. It has been translated into English, French and Arabic. As a filmmaker he has more than fifty international awards in some of the most prestigious festivals in the world.
