In December 2024, OR Books posthumously published If I Must Die, a collection of work by Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian writer and professor who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023. The opening line from the now-famous titular poem reads: “If I must die / you must live / to tell my story.”

Now, a new anthology from Copper Canyon Press aims to answer Alareer’s call. You Must Live, out today, assembles poetry by Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank who are enduring an Israeli military campaign that has killed nearly 65,000 Palestinians since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The anthology is translated by Tayseer Abu Odeh and Sherah Bloor, who also compiled it alongside guest editor Jorie Graham.

Bloor noted that You Must Live is unique on account of both its timeliness and its scope. Most of the poems were written after or just before Oct. 7, 2023, and it almost exclusively features poets currently living in Gaza and the West Bank. (The one exception, Yahya Ashour, was on a trip to the U.S. on October 7 and was never able to return home).

Abu Odeh and Bloor’s collaboration began in 2021 with a portfolio of poetry from Gaza for Peripheries: A Journal of Word, Image, and Sound (Harvard University Press), where Bloor is editor-in-chief. Bloor saw a submission from Abu Odeh, a Palestinian-Jordanian writer and translator, and wanted him to be involved because of his experience with exile.

Abu Odeh has since gone on to author a book on the subject, Gardens of Exile, which recently came out from the Arab Institute for Research and Publication. With this anthology, though, Abu Odeh and Bloor wanted to move away from the theme of exile. They had the support of Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who guest-edited the Peripheries portfolio and, until very recently, lived in Gaza.

“Mainstream literary writings about Palestine articulate this idea about Palestine from afar,” Abu Odeh said, alluding to the diasporic poets that are more commonly published in the U.S. He said that he and Bloor were determined to make You Must Live something different. “It doesn't mean that what has been already written about Palestine from outside doesn't represent Palestine, but I would say it's more authentic to talk about Palestine from inside.”

Copper Canyon editor-in-chief Michael Wiegers said that the logistical challenges posed by this quest—to source, correspond with, and publish poets living amid a humanitarian crisis—were immense. Getting even simple corrections would involve the poet “finding a cell phone that still has some juice in it and climbing on top of a rubble heap, because that was the best possible reception, at the risk of being shot.”

Paying the poets who appeared in the anthology—something Copper Canyon was always committed to doing—was also impeded by the destruction of Gaza’s banking system, according to Wiegers. At the time of writing, all the wires had successfully gone through, said Copper Canyon publisher and executive director Ryo Yamaguchi, but “it’s pretty hard to have confirmation from every contributor.” Yamaguchi added that, because of the speed at which You Must Live was assembled, the nonprofit press relied heavily on its donors to realize the anthology.

Wiegers said that the process was difficult, but not without its “beautiful” moments: “There were folks along the way who were expressing resistance, but the conversations that I had with donors were so impassioned.” Copper Canyon decided to only solicit donations from inside the U.S., and Wiegers said he was moved to “witness the passion that people are bringing to this moment in history.”

Bloor said that these logistical challenges are one reason that contemporary Palestinian poetry is often disseminated by being ripped off a poet’s social media account or self-publishing platform and hastily translated, sometimes without permission. “It's not how you would respect a poem, typically, as an editor or translator,” she said. “I mean, we work for days on each poem, like weeks and months. It's hard work.” With You Must Live, Bloor and Abu Odeh were determined to translate the poems with care, and often managed to consult directly with poets even amid Gaza’s decimated communication infrastructure.

The poems in You Must Live are marked by grief and violence, Abu Odeh said, but they also contain existential reflections, imagine alternate worlds, and converse with the rich history of Arabic poetry—there are even, Bloor noted, moments when horror and humor exist side by side. It is through this juxtaposition, Abu Odeh said, that “the political agency of Palestinians is implied.”

For his part, Wiegers said he knows that You Must Live will be received as a “political statement,” but he hopes that readers will encounter the anthology first and foremost as a work of poetry. He added, “We aimed to just show the ordinary lives that have become extraordinary by virtue of being immanent in a genocide zone.”