Bringing Yahya Hassan to Palestinian readers

Focus: Literature and cultural dialogue
Who: 1,500 books printed, ~300 workshop participants
Where: Gaza Strip and Occupied West Bank, Palestine
When: December 2024 — March 2026
Partner: Tamer Institute for Community Education

For the first time, the poetry of esteemed Palestinian/Danish writer Yahya Hassan has been published in Arabic and brought to Palestinian readers. With support from The Danish House in Palestine, Tamer Institute for Community Education published Excerpts from Yahya Hassan, featuring 34 poems from his two collections that explore themes of exile, violence, identity, and displacement.

What we did together

We printed 1,000 copies in Gaza and 500 in the occupied West Bank, making Hassan’s visceral poetry accessible to Arabic-speaking audiences. His words about refugee camps in Lebanon, Israeli bombardment, and the experience of being torn between worlds now resonate powerfully with young Palestinians navigating their own realities of occupation and loss.

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“The texts we read today were frankly psychologically damaging. You read something and feel the extent of the psychological harm the writer was experiencing and feeling… This in itself evokes admiration… and so I admired how you can convey the feeling through words. Even I, far away, felt the same pain.”

— Dina, workshop participant

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In February 2026, Tamer Institute organized Literary Days youth camps in Ramallah and Gaza, bringing together young people from all over Palestine to discuss Hassan’s work. The discussions were profound: participants grappled with questions of authorial voice, whether to stay in their homeland or seek safety elsewhere, and links between Yahya Hassan and contemporary Palestinian literature. They analyzed Hassan’s poems and connected his immigrant experience in Denmark to their own marginalization under occupation.

The youth wrote their own reflections, moved by Hassan’s rawness. As one participant from Gaza noted: “Even if the vision came from afar, it was a piece of reality.” The project sparked critical conversations about what it means to read Palestinian literature today – particularly in the aftermath of recent violence – and how literature can bridge distances, languages, and generations of displacement.

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“Perhaps we can observe the identity crisis experienced by the poet, a point that is quite evident in the text. This crisis is not unique to the poet; it is present in the lives of immigrants in general, and Palestinians in particular. Since 1948, we have lived in a continuous state of identity crisis. Every time Palestinian identity begins to heal, it is subjected to a process of fragmentation, only to have that healing process reshaped anew.”

— Muhammad, workshop participant

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The project also facilitated cross-cultural dialogue between Danish and Palestinian youth. Through a discussion session led by Palestinian author Dalia Taha, young people from Operation Dagsværk in Denmark engaged in conversation with participants from the West Bank and Gaza. This exchange allowed Danish and Palestinian audiences to explore Hassan’s poetry together, bridging the distance between his experience as a Palestinian in Denmark and the lived realities of young Palestinians today.