The Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris has announced a program dedicated to commemorating the legacy of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich, scheduled to take place from September 25 to 27. Organized in partnership with the Georges-Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris, the event, titled Mahmoud Darwich Poetic Day, will feature a series of cultural activities across fifteen cities in France and abroad. The initiative seeks to honor the poet's contributions and to foster cultural exchange and diversity through these gatherings. Mahmoud Darwich was born in 1941 in alBirwa, a village in what is now Israel, and passed away in Houston in 2008. He was one of the most prominent figures in Palestinian literature, having authored over twenty poetry collections and seven prose books, many of which have been translated into more than twenty-two languages. Throughout his career, he received numerous awards, including the Lenin Peace Prize, the Prince Claus Prize, and the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, a French honor recognizing cultural excellence. Darwich's early life was marked by loss and displacement. At the age of seven, he was told his mother was in Akka, and he spent hours walking in the heat before returning to find his family grieving her absence. Soon after, his family fled their home due to the violence of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, an event that forced Darwich to live as a refugee. This experience deeply influenced his poetry and worldview, shaping his understanding of exile and displacement. Throughout his life, Darwich experienced various forms of exile. After his village was destroyed in 1948, he joined the Israeli Communist Party in 1961 and was imprisoned multiple times between 1961 and 1967. Later, he lived in several countries, including Moscow, Cairo, Beirut, Tunis, and Paris. In Beirut, he founded the magazine alKarmel in 1981, which he would edit until his death. His life was further disrupted by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which forced him to leave Beirut once again. Darwich's poetic voice evolved from militant themes to a broader humanism, using Palestine as a metaphor to speak for other marginalized communities and historical tragedies. His work was never rooted in hatred but in pain and hope. In his poem Think of Others, he emphasized the importance of empathy and considering the needs of others in daily life. His journey was one of personal and artistic emancipation, moving from being a poet of resistance to a thinker of identity and, ultimately, a witness to the wounds of humanity. In 1993, he left the Palestine Liberation Organization, not as an act of surrender, but as a commitment to the purity of poetry, believing it should not serve political power, even that of his own people.