Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author, widely regarded as the national poet of Palestine. Born in al-Birwa, a village destroyed in 1948, his early displacement shaped his lifelong themes of exile, memory, and belonging. He published his first collection at nineteen and went on to release over thirty volumes of poetry and prose, fusing personal lyricism with political urgency to give the Palestinian experience a universal voice.

Darwish edited literary journals, penned the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, and briefly served on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee. Exiled for decades in Cairo, Beirut, Paris, and Ramallah, he became a leading cultural figure. His poetry, translated into more than twenty languages and often set to music, solidified his place as a global voice of modern Arabic literature until his death in 2008.