UPA is delighted to continue our Monthly Poetry Collection, curated by Palestinian-American poet and UPA supporter Zeina Azzam! On the first Tuesday of each month throughout 2021, a poem related to Palestine will be posted on our blog and social media pages. 

For the month of March, we feature Khaled Abdallah’s “Seeds in Flight.” 

Khaled Abdallah, born in 1970, is a Palestinian poet from Deir al-Balah in Gaza, now residing in Paris. In 2001, his first poetry collection, titled FM, won the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s poetry prize. Abdallah writes in Arabic and his poems depict humanistic images from daily life that resonate widely. He often centers the themes of dislocation and separation, like in today’s beautiful poem “Seeds in Flight,” a translation of Abdallah’s Arabic poem. It conjures history through the persona of an “ancient woman” who plants and embroiders Palestine’s ancestral and present culture. This particular verse offers a hopeful ending, an affirmation of steadfastness and continuity. 

Read the complete poem here!

 
About Zeina Azzam 

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. Her poems are published widely in literary journals, anthologies, and edited volumes. Zeina’s chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, will be released by The Poetry Box in May 2021. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University.