Painted into a Corner

This is a collection of poems accompanied by a few of the poet's watercolours. The poems cover several decades of hope, disappointment, passion, striving for peace, further disappointment and more hope.

Mikdadi is a Palestinian living in the Diaspora. Those familiar with his works would know about his passionate desire to establish peace between Israelis and Palestinians. His novel 'Return' was published in 2008 and deals with the development of a Palestinian artist living in the Palestinian Diaspora in Beirut - Lebanon. His articles and essays have consistently tried to push for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian war. He passionately believes that peace is preferable to the inhuman and awful events of the last sixty six years. Both Israelis and Palestinians have missed countless opportunities for peace for all kinds of reasons; from greed to obscurantism to tribal loyalties to religious bigotry and downright stupidity.

In these poems Mikdadi shows his anger, outrage, bemusement, hurt, upset and many other negative feelings felt by both sides to the conflict. But underlying each line is Mikdadi's enduring sense of hope that peace is possible and will, one day, become the overriding desire of every human being living in Palestine and Israel.

Mikdadi starts this collection of poetry and watercolours with an introductory essay analysing the endless missed opportunities and greed on both sides. For those who are not interested in political exegesis, the introduction could easily be missed so that the reader could go straight to the poems, paintings and other supporting images.