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This artifact is a reading of Ahmed Fouad Negm's poem, "Who Are They and Who Are We?" This poem was written in light of the Egyptian revolution and is used to compare and contrast the lives of the ruling class with the working class citizens in order to inspire a sense of hope that the working class can over throw the ruling class.

I'm proud to say I got to spend an evening with Negm and a group of mutual friends in Cairo before he passed away. He told legendary jokes in spontaneous verse.

In this article Andy Young discusses the multiple ways poetry has shaped and formed itself in Egypt because of revolutions. Young brings up multiple poems that became the voice of the people in the 1952 revolutions and again in the 2011 revolutions.

This artifact is from Syrian writer, Mohamed Raouf Bachir, and discusses the the feelings a refugee experiences when fleeing from the hellish Middle East into a place where there is uncertainty of acceptance, but somewhere that still feels like freedom.

This article talks about how poetry is similar to the revolution because of the way it has transformed the people; the revolution has changed common moments and common people into inspiring times the way poetry changes common words into something extraordinary. It talks about how both poetry and revolution have been able to seek justice and tear down symbols of powers. For these revolution, poetry has been able to keep the needs and wants of the people alive and real.

This article, written by Mohammed Kheir, discusses how poetry during the revolution was used to empower the people but became attributed to popular revolutionary poets because of fear of being accosted. So, while stanzas were popularized and while they may be remembered, the actual poets behind them may not be.