Voices from Palestine and other sites of rupture, held in solidarity, resistance, and care.

On Thursday 7 May, 5–7PM, a public gathering took place outside Chiesa di Sant’Antonin. Over 170 artists, contributors, and guests read from the Elegy Reader, activating a communal work of mourning that foregrounded solidarity, resilience, survival, and collective creative expression. Copies of the reader were freely available at the event.  

This community-driven project expanded upon the pressing concerns of Goliath’s Elegy; a work of ritual mourning, addressing conditions of femicide and rape culture in South Africa, and genocide in Namibia and Gaza. Bringing together poetry and texts responding to histories of displacement, colonialism, and genocide, this gathering of poetry highlighted what mourning can accomplish as a radical basis for community, forging connections in and across differences. 

The launch of the Elegy Reader in Venice enacted an insurgent intervention within the Biennale context, asserting voice, presence and poetry against conditions of violence and disregard.

As a collective assembly, the Elegy Reader brings together 50 poems, comprising works by the Palestinian poet Heba Abunada, Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, Haitian poet Danielle Legros Georges, South African writer Maneo Mohale, amongst many others.  

Conceived not as an accompaniment but as an extension of Elegy, the reader opens a shared space for mourning, insisting on grief as a collective and political act. Through language, it holds what cannot be resolved yet must nevertheless be spoken. 

The Elegy Reader is a sister initiative of the Gaza Reader (Volume 1, 2024) organised by Artists Against Apartheid, Bidoun, WAWOG (Writers Against the War on Gaza) and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation.