Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and scholar from Gaza, whose work reflects the experiences of both himself and those living in the country, through both “relative peacetime and... a barely liveable occupation” as the blurb to Forest Of Noise – his latest poetry collection, published today – states.
Toha is also the author of Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear (2022), winner of the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award and a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award.
This poem – The Ball And The Bombs – is taken from Forest Of Noise. The poem describes the deaths of four children from the Bakr family, a group of school-age siblings and cousins who were struck by Israeli missiles while they were playing on Gaza City’s fishing beach in 2014.
Forest Of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha is available now
