PFFA: Poetry Recital

Spoken language: English & Arabic (dual poetry recital)

Guests: Gráinnemir Amir Abualrob and Shira Wolfe

Project name
Let’s go as we are, a free woman and a loyal friend

Project description
An enchanting collaborative poetry reading will be held at the Lab111 Chapel, recited by Amsterdam-based poet Shira Wolfe and Dublin-based actor Gráinnemir Amir Abualrob. Previously connected at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin (West Bank), this duo have collaborated together for over a decade, most recently reciting the late Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry. The performance features poems they wrote about Palestine, drawing from their experiences there. This event will include Shira‘s 2016 short film Tracing Darwish, a surreal road trip through Palestine interweaving Darwish’s poetry. Furthermore, their performance and conversations will explore their relationship — that of a queer Palestinian actor who came to Ireland as a refugee, and a poet with Ukrainian heritage, whose practice brought her to Palestine. The two met in 2015 while working together at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin.

Gráinnemir Amir Abualrob
Gráinnemir Amir Abualrob (they/them) is a queer Palestinian theatre practitioner, trainer and facilitator based in Dublin. In 2017, they completed a four-year programme at The Freedom Theatre (TFT) in Jenin Refugee Camp, Palestine, which focused on theatre studies and cultural resistance. By working with the local community and creating theatre performances which have toured in Palestine and internationally, a great diversity of Palestinian voices are amplified. Amir’s work currently focuses on using physical theatre, storytelling and cultural resistance to confront oppression in all its forms. Amir has been awarded the AIC bursary award for Collaborative Arts and Cultural Diversity in October

Shira Wolfe
Shira Wolfe (she/her) is an Amsterdam-based Dutch-American writer and poet with a background in theatre. In 2015, she acted in a play in Jenin during a collaboration between Transversal Theater Company and The Freedom Theatre. One year later, she returned to Palestine to shoot a movie inspired by the poet Mahmoud Darwish—her graduation project for the MA in International Performance Research, which was supported by the Lutfia Rabbani Foundation. Shira has worked with refugee communities in Belgrade and is currently working with asylum seekers in the Netherlands through art foundation De Vrolijkheid. She leads art and poetry workshops which are centred around the power of multilingualism. Since 2023, Shira has also been working with The Mystifiers, a socially engaged music collective in Amsterdam. Her debut poetry collection will be published in January 2025 by The New Menard Press.

Movie description
Tracing Darwish – a journey through (seemingly lost) Palestinian spaces is at once a road movie, a video poem and an exploration in psychogeography. The movie traces the footsteps of Mahmoud Darwish, searching for his village Al Birwa, as well as the filmmaker’s own experiences in Palestine. Though Al Birwa no longer physically exists, the space where it used to be still carries its stories and histories, and it is this fascination with the different layers of space, and the power that poetry has to recall past spaces, that inspired this project. The movie was created by Shira Wolfe in 2016, with voice-overs by Gráinnemir Amir Abualrob.

This film is part of Palestinian Film Festival Amsterdam.