Poetry in the Era of Social Networks: The Case of Faraḥ Šammā

Abstract

The research focuses on the linguistic and content analysis of the poems of the young poetess of Palestinian origin Faraḥ Šammā. The peculiarity of this artist consists in using the Internet and in particular videos on YouTube to recite her poems orally. As a Spoken Word artist, Faraḥ Šammā has grasped in the tool of video channels the way to transmit her compositions as she does in the course of her live performances. Starting from a reflection on the role of orality and poetry in the Arab cultural tradition and on how this literary form is inserted in the context of the new digital communication media, the work focuses on examining the thematic and linguistic aspects of the selected corpus. The goal is to extend the analysis to other forms of poetry, less conventional but which can help to open a wider glimpse into the knowledge of new literary phenomena in the Arab world.