For a moment, Zeina Azzam seemed lost for words.
On Tuesday, Alexandria’s outgoing poet laureate was praised by the City Council for her literary impact on the city. For the last three years, Azzam has written and read 23 original poems at the city’s birthday celebration and other significant events with thousands in the audience. She’s led poetry readings and workshops, visited schools, and judged poetry contests.
“I thank you for not just sharing your reflections, but also sharing the challenge to each of us to be better,” Mayor Alyia Gaskins said after a proclamation was read in Azzam’s honor.
The past three years have allowed Azzam to focus exclusively on poetry and political activism. As the daughter of Palestinian refugees ousted from Israeli territory seized in 1948, Azzam spent decades as a Middle East studies expert, publications editor, and program manager in D.C. She retired from full-time work just before starting as poet laureate.
Last year, Azzam read her poem “Write My Name” at the United Nations headquarters. She was inspired to write the poem after reading a CNN report about Palestinian parents writing their children’s names on their legs in magic marker to identify them in case they were killed in the Gaza conflict.
“Write my name on my leg, Mama,” the poem begins. “Use the black permanent marker with the ink that doesn’t bleed if it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt if it’s exposed to heat.”
The poem has been translated into multiple languages, and has been read at protests, vigils, and even in the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to WTOP.
During her tenure as poet laureate, she also published her debut full-length collection, Some Things Never Leave You.
“It’s been such a beautiful journey for me, and really one of the great honors of my lifetime,” Azzam said at City Hall. “Thank you to Alexandria for welcoming me as poet laureate and writer, as a woman, as an older woman, as an Arab American, as a Palestinian American, as a daughter of refugees, as an immigrant, and so much more.”
Azzam’s last day as Alexandria’s poet laureate is April 30.
ALXnow: Do you have a structured time when you work, like do you write from 9 to 5?
Azzam: I know a lot of people who wake up, even at like 5 a.m., before the day starts, before family wakes up, and they sit and write as a routine habit. I don’t do that. I wait for inspiration, and I look for inspiration. I do a lot of reading. I read the news, I read novels, I read a lot of different things, but I read a lot of poetry. When I get inspired to write a poem, it could happen as I’m reading and I find a quote that I use as an epigraph, or it could be a poem I read that kind of sparks in me. Or I could be walking by the river, which I live by in Old Town near the river. I walk pretty much daily as long as the weather is good. I get inspired a lot by just walking and looking at the water and looking at the moon, looking at vegetation, seeing people. So, I don’t have that kind of practice where I just make myself write every day. Once I’m inspired, though, and I’m inspired often, I start writing, and I get obsessive about the poem that I’m writing.
ALXnow: When did you formally retire?
Azzam: I actually formally retired in 2022, a month before I got the poet laureate position, not knowing that I was going to get it. I had made that plan several months before, and so I went from retiring in March of 2022 to becoming Poet Laureate in April of 2022, essentially.
ALXnow: Now that you’ve done full-time poetry for the last three years, how have you changed as an artist?
Azzam: I think I’ve changed quite a bit. I’ve grown as a person, as a poet. Being poet laureate, I had to learn so much about Alexandria, about our history here, about all the different communities, about how the city works. I had already been living here for many years, and I’d been quite involved in local-level politics with Grassroots Alexandria. That’s the organization that I’ve been volunteering for since 2016, when Trump was elected. But when I became poet laureate, I had to learn a lot more.
ALXnow: Did this work help you write non-Alexandria-related poetry?
Azzam: I have to say that writing poetry about discrimination and prejudice and oppression and war, it informed my poetry about Palestine. And my poetry about Palestine informed those poems, too, because as a Palestinian American, I understand oppression. I’m not African American, but I relate to all these issues that African Americans face.
ALXnow: What’s next for you?
Azzam: I’ve been really focusing on poetry for Alexandria. I have several poems that I am pulling together. I’m hoping to have a manuscript. The thing with manuscripts is that they need to hang together, and so I need to probably be writing more poems with a particular theme.
ALXnow: What’s your favorite poem in the 23 you submitted?
Azzam: One is the very first poem I wrote that I actually used for my application to be poet laureate. We were asked to write a poem that reflects the diversity of Alexandria. I wrote this poem where I use the metaphor of trees and how trees in a forest, how different that they all have root systems and they connect with each other. It’s called, Like the Trees in Alexandria.
ALXnow: Do people recognize you in the city, like when you’re out in public?
Azzam: It happens a lot in Alexandria. I’ll be at the Harris Teeter and people all the time say, “Oh, didn’t we see you reading that poem?”
ALXnow: What was it like speaking before the United Nations?
Azzam: I spoke there as a Palestinian poet, not as Poet Laureate of Alexandria. It was the 76th commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from Palestine and my entire family are included in this. My job was to read poetry that I had written about my family. I read about my father, and I read a poem about my mother and mentioned her name. It was a very profound experience for me as a person and as a poet to be bringing their voices, bringing their names, bringing their memories, because they were the first people experiencing that war of displacement and dispossession, and they were never able to go back.
ALXnow: You also read “Write my name on my leg, Mama.” Is that your most successful poem?
Azzam: Yes, as far as outreach. I wrote it in October 2023, soon after the Israel war on Gaza started. Parents were writing their children’s names on their legs and on their arms, so that if they get killed, they’d be identified. And just that whole idea showed so much hopelessness. It was just so awful, and I think this poem just hit a nerve, because it’s about children, and it’s in a child’s voice.
It is important for people to see Palestinians for who they are. As a Palestinian poet, I want people to understand what it’s like for these children to be thinking, “We’re writing our names because we’re going to get killed, but our parents can’t do anything to help us.” You know? I mean, that’s horrible, but how many people would really think that through? You know what a child is thinking in Gaza right now? I wanted to bring that out.
ALXnow: What advice do you have for writers?
Azzam: Find a poet that resonates with you. You need to read a lot of poetry to be able to write it well. You need to read different styles, different writers, check out forms, or write in free verse, but to read all of this stuff because it gives you a lot of ideas. It gives you a lot of depth in really exploring the field. Also, it takes humility to be a poet. You have to be humble to get the story, but bold to tell it.
