A Gaza poet's exile, rendered into verse
Nour Elassy, a Gazan poet and journalist who left the enclave last year, publishes her first collection in France, "Ceci est ma maison," on September 9.
Nour Elassy left Gaza in 2025 after Israel approved her evacuation, according to Le Monde. She had been accepted to study at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and the move meant leaving her family behind in the enclave.
On September 9 she publishes "Ceci est ma maison," a collection of poems that, per Le Monde's description, conjures a world swallowed by the destruction of the Palestinian territory. Le Monde gives her age as 23; Bibliobs, in a separate profile published the same day, describes her as a 24-year-old poet and journalist a year on from what it calls the ordeal of the enclave.
Bibliobs situates her now between lecture halls at the EHESS and walks through the Parc Montsouris, describing a life she is piecing back together in Paris. She tells the outlet it feels absurd to have to prove she is "a normal woman, who loves life," a remark Bibliobs frames as pushing back against what it calls the world's anesthesia toward Gaza.
To Le Monde, Elassy speaks of living with the guilt of having left her own behind. Both outlets present the new collection as an attempt to work through that exile in writing, without offering further detail on its contents, structure or publisher.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
