Josephine Corcoran

Alice Oswald arrested for standing up for Palestinian rights

When they arrest poets as terrorists it’s time to start worrying. Alice Oswald arrested for
SUPPORTing
PALESTINE ACTION

Just to add: Backlisted is good, and please don't confuse it and Unbound.

Here’s an essay from eco-sonneteer, #JemmaBorg, which argues:

‘Poetry can get past all the kinds of barriers we set up within and between ourselves and between us and what we’ve historically called nature – that which we are embedded in.’

poetsfortheplanet.org.uk/what-do-we-m...

#EcoSonnetChain

Thanks 🤩

I was a runner up in 2010: my poem ‘Honeymoon’ published in that year’s anthology. It was my first published poem (I’d previously written short stories & plays) & the first thing I’d written after a BIG break while my children were little. Grateful to Bridport & Michael Laskey for choosing my poem.

It has been over 660 days of atrocities against civilians in #Gaza.
international media not allowed into Gaza to independently report.

This ban on international media fuels disinformation and deepens dehumanization of the Palestinian people.

The ban must be lifted now.

News: issue nine of Finished Creatures opens for submissions tomorrow - for the month of August. The theme is Trespass: verb and noun; sin and action; rights and wrongs. Please see the website for more information. xx

This is not an impossible ask but a question of political will: other countries such as Italy and France have resolved similar issues, and the UK previously made similar exceptions for Ukrainian students. That the UK Home Office won't do so now, when every day that passes puts these scholars at renewed risk, is shameful. We are asking you to write to your MPs urging them to support deferral of biometrics for Gazan students - to show them that while the Home Office may lack the will, the people don't.

We are particularly asking for your support if you live in one of the following constituencies: Dame Angela Eagle MP - Wallasey, Liverpool Dame Diana Johnson - Kingston upon Hull North Dan Jarvis MP - Barnsley North Jess Phillips - Birmingham Yardley Seemja Malhorta MP - Feltham and Heston We have a template letter you can adapt: http://bit.ly/44SLnX9 Find your MP and their email here: members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

❗️We’re calling on the govt to see sense, and we’re asking you to write to your MPs to urge them to do so — particularly constituents in - Wallasey, Liverpool
- Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham
- Barnsley North
- Birmingham Yardley

Template letter: bit.ly/44SLnX9

Weeks went by. We waited, hearing only that the scholarship had received over 500 applications. In June, Haia received the email notifying her that she'd been awarded a fully paid scholarship to come and study creative writing in London for four years starting this autumn. The immense joy and relief we all felt was inexpressible.

Now came the logistical challenge of evacuation. How does a uni safely evacuate a person out of a concentration camp and what is the red tape surrounding such an endeavour? Haia cleared hurdle after hurdle to reach this point, but now the obstacle she faced was that of the British government:

Everyone who comes to the UK to study needs a student visa which is granted by the Home Office. Before a visa can be issued, all applicants must undergo biometrics screening at an authorised Visa Application Centre to take fingerprints and other health indicators. The issue Haia and others face is that there is no functioning VAC in Gaza. There is simply nowhere for them to take these tests, without which they will not be issued the visas they need to exit Gaza and take up their UK university places.

Over 80 students and scholars in Gaza in receipt of places at UK universities are trapped in this situation. We are now calling on the government to allow and expedite the deferral of biometric data application for visa applicants in Gaza, and to open a route of safe passage for Haia and the other students to travel to the UK.

80 students & scholars with places at UK universities are trapped by UKHO insistence on biometrics when there is NOWHERE in Gaza for them to take these tests.

Other countries have resolved similar issues; the UK did for Ukrainian students

When Out-Spoken Press held a MAP fundraiser back in October 2023, we featured the poetry of Haia Mohammed, a young poet in Gaza who had recently sent us some of her work. Over the course of the unfolding genocide we stayed in touch. She even joined us in the Poetry Room amid all the devastation and upheaval she was experiencing just to work on her craft.

Over the course of the year Haia continued to write on what she was experiencing. In March 2025, she messaged me saying she was unsure if she would survive the genocide and wanted her poems to defy borders, hold witness and act in service of her people being brutally silenced.

We published her pamphlet, The Age of Olive Trees, in May with all proceeds going directly to her and her family. At the same time, Goldsmiths University in London opened their Palestinian Scholarships programme, offering four Palestinians full scholarships to pursue their studies at the university. Haia messaged to say she wanted to apply for the scholarship, to come to London and write poetry that held at its centre a testimony to the violent oppression and the endurance of the Palestinian people.

Haia prepared her application under relentless bombardment, mass killings, starvation, and illness. Out-Spoken Press, together with a small committed team to whom I'm forever indebted, supported her with the tools to finish her submission. The pamphlet received critical acclaim in The Guardian and has continued to win the hearts of readers from all over the world in the space of a few months.

Please read & share the scholarship story of Gazan poet Haia,

❗️and how you can take one action now to help her and the other scholars trapped in Gaza by UK govt red tape ❗️

You cannot address the starvation in Gaza without addressing the fact that Israel also destroyed all agriculture and fishing as part of this engineered famine. It's not just cutting off food aid, it is destroying all internal capability to feed people.

True. Beautifully written is what I meant, I think! And I’ll send on to someone I know who’s learning more about poetry, it will help them.

Yorkshire Times Poem of the Week: 'God's Grandeur' by Gerard Manley Hopkins
yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem...

Thanks for your beautiful (and enviably succinct!) analysis of this poem

Cardinal calls Israel’s policy in Gaza ‘morally unjustifiable’ after visit Pierbattista Pizzaballa condemns blocks on food and warns against plans to force Palestinians to leave territory

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Israeli cruise ship turned away from Greek island by Gaza war protest Tourists greeted on Syros by banner saying Stop the Genocide and prevented from disembarking

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

"Silencing voices.

As if banning international media is not enough.
Humanitarian workers are also banned when they report on atrocities committed in #Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory."

Full statement: x.com/unlazzarini/...

Pope condemns Gaza war’s ‘barbarity’ as 73 reported killed while waiting for food Pontiff also speaks of anguish over Israeli strike on territory’s only Catholic church, which killed three people

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

A cast member at the Royal Opera House unfurled a #Palestinian flag on stage during the curtain call of Il trovatore... 🇵🇸

Christine Allen spoke to Sky News after the Holy Family Church in Gaza was hit and three people tragically died.

We once again call on the international community to act urgently to ensure that people in Gaza have access to the most basic right: the chance to survive.

British surgeon working in #Gaza Prof Nick Maynard speaking on #R4 saying he’s operating on young boys, 11, 12, 13, the same injuries on different days, sometimes all with gunshots to the head, sometimes to the testicles etc as if that is the target for the day at the food distribution area

‘One day they target the head, next day the testicles…I wouldn’t believe this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes’ - horrifying account of life in Gaza by surgeon, Professor Nick Maynard, just now on #r4today.

Professor Nick Maynard gave devastating testimony on BBC radio 4 Today programme just now about what’s happening Gaza. Profoundly distressing. So courageous, he & his Gazan medical colleagues.

‘Every single day since the start of the war in #Gaza, on average, a classroom full of children have been killed,’ UNRWA Sam Rose tells BBC Radio 4 Today.

Nothing justifies the killing of children wherever they are.

#CeasefireNow

Labour taking Diane Abbott’s latest comments on racism ‘incredibly seriously’ MP says she does not regret earlier comments that led to year-long suspension from party

Excellent. Labour's incredibly white Cabinet is going to lecture Dianne Abbott about racism. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

When will white people listen to the black person in the room?

This bombing cannot be justified! I am so sorry for the loss of life and destruction