Hope
It's the darkest and heaviest days
I've witnessed in my life.
The night is so bleak
And the day is so pale
The earth shakes under our feet
And the sky is swamped with innocent flying souls.
But our faith is stalwart
Like the rooted mountains.
The sun will rise again
And the settlers will leave my stolen land.
The hideous and notorious occupation will end
And all free people around the world will celebrate
A new era of freedom
They'll gather in Palestine,
The flags will wave
And the sweets will be served.
Gaza
Here's Gaza, where hunger becomes a killer,
The buzzing drones become a chronic disease,
and coldness becomes a knife
In the heart of homelessness,
The destruction becomes the witness to the crime.
No flour, no bread, no medicine, no children's milk,
No fuel, no power, no hospitals, no schools,
No safety, nothing except death.
Gaza is starving,
Destroyed, punished,
tortured every minute, hour, day.
It's not a war,
It's a collective execution to a whole land,
an entire people and a complete life.
Ahmed Miqdad (b. 1985) is a Palestinian poet resident of Gaza. He has a B.A. in English and a Master in Education. Ahmed is the author of three collections of poetry (Gaza Narrates Poetry (2014), Stolen Lives (2015) and When Hope Is not Enough (2019)) and a novel Falastin: The Hope of Tomorrow (2018). The latest poetry collection is The Shadow: Poems for the Children of Gaza. He has witnessed over three wars and severe aggression by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people since the 1980s with a huge loss of life. He writes and publishes to raise consciousness about the Palestinian cause."
The water, once a crystalline mirror reflecting the infinite blue,
has become a distorted reflection,
a broken mirror showing a sick,
contaminated face, full of chemical scars.
The forests, once majestic,
stand like naked skeletons,
their dry branches whispering a silent agony,
a lament for lost life.
The cities, giants of concrete and steel,
have been transformed into oppressive cages,
imprisoning life in their labyrinth of asphalt,
suffocating the breath of nature.
A dull echo, a stifled cry,
rises from the earth,
a deep lament that barely reaches our ears,
deafened by the noise of industry,
by the constant hum of technology.
Seeds of destruction, sown with indifference,
with greed, spread with the wind,
reaping a toxic future, a future where life withers,
where beauty fades.
Time, inexorable, flows like a slowly emptying hourglass,
watching us with an impassive gaze,
a silent witness to our destruction.
But in the deepest darkness, a spark of hope persists.
A green shoot, timid and fragile,
pushes its way through the cracks in the asphalt,
defying the gray monotony.
A solitary flower, a resilient tree,
a sign of life that resists death.
A faint but firm echo whispers in the wind,
an echo of hope that rises above lament,
a song to the possibility of regeneration,
a call to action, to responsibility, to transformation.
Nature, wounded but not defeated,
extends a hand to us, a last chance.
The future is not yet written…
GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.
It all started with the World Storytelling Championship!
Year 2020.
ACEnovation took a deep breadth and jumped into the warm embrace of the ocean called storytelling! The cool water enveloped us, silencing the world above and pulling us into its serene depths… The deeper we dived the more interesting & beautiful it became – an underwater garden bustling with stories – we felt a sense of freedom and that inate connection to stories, storytelling and storytellers! 5 years. We swam around the world. Quietly. Setting benchmarks. Touching lives. Making a difference! Brand ACEnovation is warmth. It connects…Bonds. We, now have family in 181 countries. The numbers increasing. We are one. The strength in that oneness drifted us back to India.
To Launch a Storytelling Championship !
For ages 3+ to 103+ ( 6 age categories)
We picked up pearls on the way.
‘The Hindu in School’ as Media Partners.
VIT – Chennai Campus as Organizing Partners
Amar Chitra Katha as organizing partner
Chools Group as organizing partner
Image King as Bronze partner
Strung together, we made a lovely necklace and called it :
*The National Storytelling Championship NSC – INDIA 2025!*
To know more visit our website: (It is truly a well crafted story)
liquid memory that mixes with the folds of written time.
It is not a word, it is a trace,
it is not a form, it is tension,
the sign unravels and recomposes
in the time that flows beyond syntax,
beyond ordinary perception,
where ink lives like blood,
where meaning twists and expands.
You dye in someone else’s inkwell
as in your own blood,
let the word expand,
let the border dissolve,
because language does not exist in solitude,
but vibrates in the flesh of those who welcome it.
Lidia Popa was born in Romania in the locality of Piatra Șoimului, in the county of Neamț, on 16th April, 1964. She finished her studies in Piatra Neamț, Romania with a high school diploma and other administrative courses, where she worked until she decided to emigrate to Italy.
She has been living for 23 years and worked in Rome as part of the wave of intellectual emigrants since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
She wrote her first poem at her age of seven. She is a poet, essayist, storyteller, recognized in Italy and in other countries for her literary activities. She collaborates with cultural associations, literary cenacles, literary magazines and paper and online publications of Romanian, Italian and international literature. She writes in Romanian, Italian and also in other languages as an exercise in knowledge.
BOOKS
She has published her poems in six books:
in Italy:
1. ” Point different ( to be ) ” – ed. Italian and
2.” In the den of my thoughts ( Dacia ) ” – ed. bilingual Romanian/ Italian AlettiEditore 2016,
4. ” The soul of words” ed. bilingual Romanian/ Albanian Amanda Edit Verlag 2021,
5.” Syntagms with longing for clover ” ed. Romanian, EdituraMinela 2021.
6.” The Voice interior ” LidiaPopa and BakiYmeri ed. bilingual Romanian/Italian, Amanda Edit Verlag 2022.
Her poems featured in more than 50 literary anthologies and literary magazines on line from 2014 to 2023 in Italy, Romania, Spain, Canada, Serbia, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Liban,USA,etc.
Her poems are translated into Italian, French, English, Spanish, Arabic, German, Bangladesh, Portuguese, Serbian, Urdu, Dari, Tamil, etc.
Her writings are published regularly with some magazines in Romania, Italy and abroad.
She is a promoter of Romanian, Italian and international literature, and is part of the juries of the competitions.
She translates from classical or contemporary authors who strike for the refinement and quality of their verses in the languages: Italian, Romanian, English, Spanish, French, German, stating that “it is just a writing exercise to learn and evolve as a person with love for humanity, for art, poetry and literature “.
SHE IS
*Member of the Italian Federation of Writers (FUIS)
*Honorary member of the International Literary Society Casa PoeticaMagia y Plumas Republic of Colombia,
*Member of Hispanomundial Union of Writers (Union Hispanomundial de Escritores) (UHE) and Thousands Minds For Mexico (MMMEX)
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*She had come power of attorney Vice-president UHE Romania, Mars18, 2021- August 21, 2021
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*Counselor from Italy for Suryodaya Literary Foundation Odisha India,
*Director from Italy for Alìanza Cultural Universal (ACU) Argentina
*Member Motivational Strips Oman,a member of numerous other literary groups at the level internationally,
*Director of Poetry and Literature World Vision Board of Directors (PLWV) Bangladesh
*Membership of ANGEENA INTERNATIONAL NON PROFIT ORGANISATION of Canada
International Peace Ambassador of The Daily Global Nation International Independent Newspaper from Dhaka Bangladesh – 2023
*Founder literary group Lido dell’anima with LIDO DELL’ANIMA AWARDS
*Founder LIDO DELL’ANIMA Italian magazine
*Founder SILVAE VERBORUM INTERNATIONAL multilingual magazine
‘The Hindu in School’ as Media Partners. 
