Zeina Azzam's "Hedge against Hardship": A Conversation with the Poet Laureate of Alexandria, Virginia

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• Zeina Azzam's "Hedge against Hardship"A Conversation with the Poet Laureate of Alexandria, Virginia
• Renee H. Shea

The poet laureate of Alexandria, Virginia (2022–25), Zeina Azzam is a writer, editor, and community activist. She is the author of the poetry collections Some Things Never Leave You (2023) and Bayna Bayna, In-Between (2021). Currently, she is one of the Virginia-based poets contributing to an anthology for the conservation project Writing the Land (writingtheland.org).

Azzam's parents were Palestinian refugees were forced to flee to Syria in 1948 to escape the Arab-Israeli War. The family moved to Beirut when Azzam was a baby, then immigrated to the US in 1966 when she was ten. Staying at first with her grandparents in a small farming town in Iowa, she spent her teenage years in Delmar, a suburb outside Albany, New York. She received a BA in psychology from Vassar College, an MA in sociology from George Mason University, and an MA in Arabic language and literature from Georgetown University. She has served as executive director of The Jerusalem Fund and its educational program, the Palestine Center, and director of Educational Outreach at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

This interview was conducted via Zoom and email during September 2023.

renee shea:

As the poet laureate—Alexandria's first Arab American laureate—what do you see as your opportunities and responsibilities?

zeina azzam:

I'm so honored to be in this position. The responsibilities are to bring poetry to the community by getting people to read, write, and appreciate it. Right now, I'm doing just that with a grant from the Alexandria Office of the Arts to hold a haiku contest. Three external judges picked the twelve winners, and their poems were put on placards placed around the city. As someone just walks down the street and sees a poem, it may become part of their life. [End Page 115]

I do two poetry workshops a year and write a special poem for the annual Alexandria birthday party held by the [Potomac] river. I've written poems for the city's jazz festival, and I am often called to judge poetry contests in the schools and jail. There are also historic commemorations. Alexandria has a difficult history, including two documented lynchings, and last year I was asked to write a poem for each one.

rs:

Alexandria has made a bold commitment to memorializing these lynchings, including providing soil for the Equal Justice Initiative; you wrote the poem "The Earth Speaks: Honoring the Lives of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas." Have you felt in an uncomfortable position in the community doing that work?

za:

There's been no discomfort in terms of politics. We have a progressive city council, and the city has a real commitment through the Office of Historic Alexandria not only to commemorate these difficult aspects of history but also to create awareness and educate, so we have events that encourage people to reflect. While I wouldn't call it discomfort, something I think about is that I'm not Black, yet here I am writing these poems about African American history. I'm respectful and careful yet aware that I'm not an African American person who is part of this community in an organic way. Being Palestinian and understanding what it means to be on the margins of society as a people who continue to experience oppression gives me a perspective that helps me with these poems. I have a deep caring about the history and the importance of bringing these things to light as a way of moving toward justice and reparations.

rs:

How is the on-demand aspect of writing commemorative poems different from your usual process?

za:

I have to read—a lot. I read about the era of history and all the accounts, particularly about the lynchings, so I am grounded in the facts and records. I do research for some poems I write, but for these I spend time trying to understand the history and context. Another difference is that these poems are clearly not about me. I can't come to...