Paperbacks: Palestine, Ed. David & Helen Constantine

Always a cosmopolitan feast of poetry and commentary, MPT embraces Palestine – from every angle – and typically delivers revelations, not reinforcements.

David Constantine sets the tone with an essay-editorial that gathers fragments of insight instead of trumpeting a party line. Commanding poetry of witness and exile from the Palestinians Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim stands beside lyricism and longing from Israelis such as Dvora Amir and Rivka Miriam. The bilingual (Hebrew-Arabic) poet Salman Masalha further enriches this divided soil. MPT picks a crop to savour from a land where, as Tal Nitzan puts it, "love is tied to nightmare".