Palestinian poet, teacher and writer, Mossar Babutora was born in Gaza, and that's where many of the poems in his new collection called Forest of Noise were written, amidst the chaos and uncertainty of war.

We recently met at the Museum of the Palestinian People

in Washington, D.C.

Just hours after more than a dozen of his family members

were killed in an Israeli

airstrike in Gaza. This weekend he says another 22 were believed to be

killed. This story is part of our Arts and Culture series canvas and a warning some of the images are disturbing.

I don't know if you can answer this question, but how are you? How are you doing?

I don't know how to answer the question.

When every day I wake up and I go to sleep,

watching my people being killed.

And just a day morning, I've woke up to the news that the family of my aunt and her relatives

were killed in an air strike.

When Israel bombed the house, one of the kids was killed.

Her name is Sima, she is seven years old.

So I don't know how to answer this question, except to say that I'm alive.

That's the only word that I can say.

At just 31, Mossab al-O-Toha is a leading voice of a new generation of poets and one of Gaza's

best-known writers.

His first book, Things You May Hidden in My Ear,

won the American Book Award

and was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle Award for Poetry.

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