“Beyond the bars: Postcolonial readings of the poetics of confinement in Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry”

In Mahmoud Darwish’s prison poems, the prison cell transforms into a site of poetic creation and political resistance. These poems encapsulate the paradoxical emotions of confinement: within the dungeon, anguish, loss, and despair give way to resilience, resistance, and poetic invention. These emanate from the depths of sorrow, and contribute to forming a vision that transcends the physical limitations of the prison cell. The self in Darwish’s prison poems asserts its being and becoming through the confrontation against the oppressive colonizer/occupier, which seeks to marginalize or erase it. This research explores the poetics of confinement in Darwish’s work, both physical and psychological, from a postcolonial perspective, and it examines how they shape his struggle against Israeli military and cultural domination. Concepts articulated by scholars like Edward Said, Achille Mbembe, and Jacques Derrida provide the discursive framework through which the poems are analyzed.