Our Monthly Poetry Collection has been curated throughout 2021 by Palestinian-American poet Zeina Azzam. We wrap up the series with a poem from Zeina herself and offer a word of gratitude for the time and talent which she so graciously volunteered. Thank you, Zeina, for your tireless ambassadorship and advocacy for Palestinian rights and cultural heritage!

A Word from Zeina:

My poem, “Colors for the Diaspora,” was inspired by an art exhibit at The Jerusalem Fund in 2016 titled “Forbidden Colors.” Dagmar Painter, who curated the exhibition, asked artists (including photographers, potters, collage workers, and poets, among others) to respond to the 1980 Israeli Knesset law that forbade the use of the colors of the Palestinian flag. In fact, since 1967, Israel had prohibited the display of Palestinians flags. The flag as well as the combination of red, white, green, and black were therefore banned from Palestinian life. Of course, Palestinians found ways to get around this prohibition, such as planting vegetables of those colors and displaying watermelons (green shell, white rind, red fruit, and black seeds), or pictures of them, as a tactic of resistance. In 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, the ban was lifted.

Although I mention the four banned colors in this poem, I include other colors as well; this way, the flag’s colors are found organically with other colors of the spectrum, those found in nature in Palestine. The poem can be read as an elegy to our forefathers and foremothers who were displaced and dispossessed of their national home, searching for the colors of their land and struggling for the liberation of Palestine.

Read the poem here!

About Zeina Azzam

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. Her poems appear in over two dozen literary journals and anthologies including Pleiades Magazine, Mizna, Sukoon, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Split This Rock, Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, and Gaza Unsilenced. Her poetry chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, was published in 2021.