This new film from Yemeni-Russian director Mariam Al-Dhubhani was commissioned by the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, part of a four-film project: Yemen in Conflict.

Yemen in Conflict is a national partnership between LAAF, the University of Leeds and the University of Liverpool exploring how Yemeni literature and poetry can be safeguarded, and how it can further the understanding of the situation in Yemen.

For the festival we are delighted to present four newly commissioned poemfilms (video works combining poetry and film) by Olivia Furber, Mariam Al-Dhubhani, Diyala Muir and Noor Palette, created in response to original poems by contemporary Yemeni poets Ahmed Alkhulaidi, Liverpool-based Amina Atiq, Hamdan Damaag and Dr Abdul Hakim Al-Qazi. […]

The cultural heritage of Yemen is at extreme risk due to conflict: displacement has resulted in many children not learning cultural traditions and linguistic practices of their regions. Many native speakers believe the only way to protect their oral heritage is to share the language of their regions. […]

The poems featured in the films premiered here were written in response to a series of workshops held in Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and Cardiff in 2019. The aim of these workshops was to bring writers and readers together to explore poems written by Yemeni writers, some of which had been gathered specifically for the project under the loose theme of conflict resolution. With the help of a lead poet for each city, the workshops became places to hear historical as well as contemporary poems from Yemen.

Workshop attendance gave the opportunity for communities to read and write poetry together, and for poets in each city to share new work for the first time. As well, sometimes, as being charged with strong feelings of sadness at the current situation in Yemen, the workshops also emphasised the importance and joy of the ordinary. Writing poems brought into focus the pleasures, smells, textures and tastes of childhood; families, friendships, landscapes and beloved cities were evoked, and the poems and stories created in those workshops stand as a poetic embodiment of the communities who gathered to remember, write and imagine together. Hearing those new memories, poems and stories subsequently allowed the lead poets to reflect on their experiences, creating newly-commissioned works of their own. In doing so they speak both for and with the participant whose words and ideas helped so generously to bring them into the world.

Translated in turn by visual artists and filmmakers the poems again take on new and exciting forms. Three of the poems have been translated from Arabic into English, so that not only have the poems reached new versions of themselves in another artistic genre, but they also inhabit different versions of themselves through the mediation of another language. Whether they evoke the iconic streets of Sana’a or Liverpool, or the imagined gardens of the mind, these poems create what the poet Carolyn Forché has called a ‘poetry of witness’; they are part of a ‘living archive’ that speaks to the experiences of Yemenis in Britain today.

The website embeds all four films, so do check it out. Here’s the information they supply for No Words:

Mariam Al-Dhubhani

Mariam Al-Dhubhani is a Yemeni-Russian award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and curator. Al-Dhubhani is currently doing an MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar. She first pursued her passion for media during the 2011 Arab uprisings and co-founded her first media production. Al-Dhubhani’s films have been screened globally in festivals such as Carthage, Interfilm, and Oaxaca. She also utilizes Virtual Reality in highlighting stories from Yemen.

Ahmed Abdul Raqeeb Alkhulaidi

Born 1970. Married with 7 children, 4 boys and 3 girls
Studied in Taiz University, Yemen, Faculty of Arabic Literature 1994. Works in one of Cardiff industries, UK.
A writer and a poet since childhood. Participated in many events in this area.
‘I dream peace will prevail in my country Yemen…and the war stops.’