Maya Caspari

ALT When Out-Spoken Press held a MAP fundraiser back in October 2023, we featured the poetry of Haia Mohammed, a young poet in Gaza who had recently sent us some of her work. Over the course of the unfolding genocide we stayed in touch. She even joined us in the Poetry Room amid all the devastation and upheaval she was experiencing just to work on her craft.

ALT Over the course of the year Haia continued to write on what she was experiencing. In March 2025, she messaged me saying she was unsure if she would survive the genocide and wanted her poems to defy borders, hold witness and act in service of her people being brutally silenced.

ALT We published her pamphlet, The Age of Olive Trees, in May with all proceeds going directly to her and her family. At the same time, Goldsmiths University in London opened their Palestinian Scholarships programme, offering four Palestinians full scholarships to pursue their studies at the university. Haia messaged to say she wanted to apply for the scholarship, to come to London and write poetry that held at its centre a testimony to the violent oppression and the endurance of the Palestinian people.

ALT Haia prepared her application under relentless bombardment, mass killings, starvation, and illness. Out-Spoken Press, together with a small committed team to whom I'm forever indebted, supported her with the tools to finish her submission. The pamphlet received critical acclaim in The Guardian and has continued to win the hearts of readers from all over the world in the space of a few months.

ALT Photo of Maya in red, reading in front of a standing and seated audience in bookshop

ALT Launch flyer for Almost, with Tenderness by Maya Caspari - with Charlotte Shevchenko Knight, hosted by Anthony Anaxagorou. Thursday 3 April 6.30pm, Burley Fisher Books

ALT Cover of Almost, with Tenderness by Maya Caspari (a yellow book, a black and white photo of two forearms, palms facing each other but not touching, inset in the top right corner and overlaid with a translucent grey watercolour brushstroke from the top edge of the book)

ALT Almost, with Tenderness by Maya Caspari with Charlotte Shevchenko Knight hosted by Anthony Anaxagorou Thursday 3 April 2025 6.30pm Burley Fisher Books Thumbnail cover of Almost, with Tenderness: a yellow book with a black and white photo of two hands, palms facing, not touching, in the top right corner, overlaid by a grey watercolour brushstroke