Lorca

On the first days of October 2005, the city woke up to view different verses of poetry spread on banners, hung over the streets from pillar to pillar, and from building to building, signed by “Lorca”. The banners, for the first time, carried words that open on a multi-dimensional understanding, respecting the people’s ability in generating the meanings on their own. It was the power of poetry, which spoke to people this time, and related to them individually, in public, creating a tension between the usual and the peculiar.

The banners carried verses like:

• “amazing prison whose door is the moon”
•  “...and some bodies will not be replicated by dawn” 
• “There are some ships that try to bring attention in order to sink peacefully” 
• “The sea may suddenly say the names of those whom it swallowed into its entrails”  
• “no man searches for his desires in the middle of tomorrow’s blood forests” 
• “a mass of people crying and cutting their clothes waiting for bullets” 
• “if the wind blows tenderly, then my heart will take the shape of a young girl” 
• “No one in darkness will offer you distances, but well designed borders”

Such words had an immense effect on those who read them, and that effect was due to the power of poetry as a medium, and to the political context of Beirut at the time.

Presentation dates and locations:

Beirut streets