«Requiem for Gaza's Children» by Heidi Skjerve

Heidi Skjerve's work has grown out of despair at the brutal genocide in the Gaza Strip, where an incomprehensible number of children and civilians have been killed. A mourning ritual for all the lives that have been lost, for all the possibilities stolen from Gaza's children, a prayer for the suffering, but also a statement of solidarity and a protest against cowardice and paralysis from the world's political and economic leaders. The texts are taken from the traditional Catholic mass for the dead, a prayer for rest, for light and heavenly hope, but are also interspersed with some texts of the day; the poem «Genocide» by Tale Næss written in 2025, and several poems by Palestinian authors translated into Norwegian taken from the poetry anthology «Tunga mi protesterer mot døden». Among these texts we also find Refaat Alareer's (1979-2023) poem «If I must die», which “went viral” after his death, and which ends with the lines «If I must die – let it bring hope – let it be a tale».

• Heidi Skjervesolist
• Nidaros domkor