Water to Water
Gaza Renga
Published on 4. November 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
248 pages
978-1-62371-582-3 (ISBN)
Description
A poetry collaboration in the call-and-response form of Renga by two award-winning poets during the genocide in Gaza.
In 2009, prompted by the Israeli siege of Gaza, poets Marilyn Hacker and Deema Shehabi started a correspondence. It took the form of responding to each other's poems. They resumed their poetic dialogue by email after Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
Their project involved an alternate call and response between them in the tradition of the Japanese renga form, each poet picking up a word, phrase, or image from the poem preceding. The result is a fascinating poetic conversation. The two poetic voices are beautifully meshed together, so that it actually reads as one long poem.
The poetry is very rich in imagery, and these images stay with you, as do feelings the poems generate, for example, of unrest, of being in exile. Television and social media show you the pictures in the streets, this poetry takes you into the homes and minds of people. You can read it very much between the lines, and therefore it seems to speak to people about their own experiences.
Water to Water: Gaza Renga is a dignified celebration of humanity in and among atrocities. Although triggered by events in Gaza, it weaves in other conflicts past and present.
In 2009, prompted by the Israeli siege of Gaza, poets Marilyn Hacker and Deema Shehabi started a correspondence. It took the form of responding to each other's poems. They resumed their poetic dialogue by email after Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
Their project involved an alternate call and response between them in the tradition of the Japanese renga form, each poet picking up a word, phrase, or image from the poem preceding. The result is a fascinating poetic conversation. The two poetic voices are beautifully meshed together, so that it actually reads as one long poem.
The poetry is very rich in imagery, and these images stay with you, as do feelings the poems generate, for example, of unrest, of being in exile. Television and social media show you the pictures in the streets, this poetry takes you into the homes and minds of people. You can read it very much between the lines, and therefore it seems to speak to people about their own experiences.
Water to Water: Gaza Renga is a dignified celebration of humanity in and among atrocities. Although triggered by events in Gaza, it weaves in other conflicts past and present.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 227 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
186 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-62371-582-3 (9781623715823)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Marilyn Hacker is the author of twenty-one books of poems, including three collaborative books, and twenty-two collections of translations from the French. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous honors, including the National Book Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Argana International Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, editor of the Kenyon Review, and editor of the French literary journal Siècle 21. She lives between Paris and New York.