Syria’s ongoing civil war has galvanized Syrian poets to produce more documentary poetry and less coded metaphor and allegory, reports Los Angeles Times writer Jeffrey Fleishman.

“It is the verse of the forsaken in a nation of madmen with black flags, cities of ruin, and rivers of refugees,” Fleishman writes, citing the work of Khawla Dunia, Amil Kassir, Omar Offendum, and Fadwa Suleiman.

As Ghada Alatrash, a Syrian Canadian writer who translates poetry from Syria into English, told the LA Times, the poetry coming out of Syria offers “glimpses of the real tragedy that are taking place on the Syrian ground.”

However, writers still face censorship and must craft strategies for working around the bans placed on them by authorities.

Furthermore, writing in Syria has its perils; the abduction and murder of poet and songwriter Ibrahim Qashoush in June 2011 hangs like a specter over Syrian poets writing against the regime.

Syrian writers have earned significant international recognition despite the dangers—

Syrian poet Adonis, exiled in Paris since the 1960s, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Related reading: The Houston Public Library is hosting literary events that dismantle stereotypes of Islam, and the Arthur Miller Society is presenting a Syrian-Muslim interpretation of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.”

Photo Credit: James Farnan