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This is the website of Peter Oswald. It’s 2025 and I’m the Associate Writer at the Marylebone Theatre, which opened in 2022 with my play DMITRY. They’re going to stage my play THE QUEEN’S PHYSICIAN next year, directed by Jonathan Munby.
In March I’m heading a Pilgrimage for Palestine, Bristol to London Parliament Square, 18th to 30th. I’ll be fasting between dawn and sunset, trying to raise awareness about Palestine and push back against Islamophobia. I was recently on the Islam Channel talking about this.
This poem below is about a girl in Gaza, as the title says. The poets in Gaza have not fallen silent, quite the opposite; but I heard of a case that made me write this.
GIRL, GAZA
She dances like a fire,
She laughs like April rain,
But when her city disappeared
She never opened a book again
Out of the siege, they say,
She used to cross the sky
On easy wings, but then
She never opened a book again
Up to the morning star
She used to race her car,
Crimson and quick, but then
She never opened a book again
Balancing on that gem
She could see everything
Clear as first love, but then
She never opened a book again
The birds burned in the trees
And the fox drowned in its den,
She lived, and breathed – but then
She never opened a book again
The President picked up a pen
And signed the as and when,
The who and where and how
She never opened a book again
What do the pages hide,
What lost worlds live in them?
So as to lock them in
She never opened a book again.
The black script of the land
And the blank words of the wind
She’ll read right to the end,
And never open a book again