Our Monthly Poetry Collection is published on the first Tuesday of each month and curated by Palestinian-American poet and UPA supporter Zeina Azzam.

For the month of May, we feature “Mimesis,” by award-winning Palestinian poet Fady Joudah!

Fady Joudah wears many hats, including those of translator and physician. He practices as a doctor in internal medicine in Houston, Texas, where he lives with his family. Poetry is a big part of Joudah’s life: he has published five collections of his own poetry as well as several books of poetry translations, from Arabic to English. He is one of the important translators of works by the late Palestinian poet laureate Mahmoud Darwish, including the seminal collection, The Butterfly’s Burden. Joudah’s poem, “Mimesis,” is a short and powerful verse about losing one’s home, understood through a metaphor of a spider and the web it weaves in his daughter’s bicycle handles. When Joudah suggests that she tear down the web, his daughter makes the connection that people become refugees this way. Through this everyday image and a simple conversation between a father and daughter, and the innocent perspective of a child, the poet creates awareness about home, forced migration, displacement, and exile.

Click here to read the complete poem!

As a bonus, we encourage you to watch Fady Joudah’s interview with PBS NewsHour 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 May 18, 2021. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University.