Making Mirrors Writing/Righting by and for Refugees

A poetry anthology that illuminates exile and displacement. Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea. Making Mirrors offers a poetics of belonging—to the earth, family, and memories packed into backpacks. The poems go beyond refugee/citizen binaries and illuminate exile as a forced/creative space. As the refugee crisis fades from the front page of newspapers, this collection is a plea against historical amnesia and inertia; the poems are an antidote that reaches beyond despair to renewed action.

Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea. This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea. Making Mirrors offers a poetics of belonging—to the earth, family, and memories packed into backpacks. The poems go beyond refugee/citizen binaries and illuminate exile as a forced/creative space. As the refugee crisis fades from the front page of newspapers, this collection is a plea against historical amnesia and inertia; the poems are an antidote that reaches beyond despair to renewed action.

About the Authors

Jehan Bseiso is a Palestinian poet and researcher who has been working with Doctors without Borders since 2008. Her co-authored book I Remember My Name (2016) was winner of the Palestine Book Awards. 

Becky Thompson, Ph.D., is a poet, human rights activist, yogi, and professor. She is the author of several books, most recently, Teaching with Tenderness. Since 2015, Becky has been traveling to Greece, meeting rafts, documenting human rights violations, and teaching poetry workshops.