6 Jun, 2013
Canadian visa refusal for Palestinian poet overturned after social media campaign
A social media victory is being claimed on behalf of the leading Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan after his visa to enter Canada to attend a prestigious poetry award ceremony – initially denied – was granted on Thursday.
Zaqtan was shortlisted for the C$65,000 (£41,000) Griffin poetry prize in April for his 10th collection Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, described by judges as poetry which “reminds us why we live and how, in the midst of war, despair, global changes”. But the Palestinian poet and novelist, who is also founding director of the House of Poetry in Ramallah, found that his request for a visa to travel to Canada to attend the ceremony was denied by the Canadian embassy in Cairo, according to his translator Fady Joudah, on the grounds that “the reason for the visit is unconvincing”.
“There was another reason for the rejection: Zaqtan’s employment and financial status. This and the purpose of the visit did not ‘satisfy’ the officer that Mr Zaqtan would return to his place of origin after a temporary visa is granted,” said Joudah, an award-winning poet and translator, and a doctor, who lives in Houston.
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