Cover Image: Green Ancestors by Martin Bridge
Poems from the Natural Web:
The First Five Years of Writing The Land
edited by Zeina Azzam
with a foreword by Claudia Castro Luna
Available on this page November 2026
About Poems from the Natural Web: The First Five Years of Writing the Land……..
This is a selection of 98 poems from the international Writing the Land® project, which pairs poets with conserved lands and creates anthologies to support land conservation. Drawn from the first five years' work (2021-2025) which encompasses 15 anthologies, over 350 poets, and 150 land trusts, this collection includes a preface and section introductions by editor and Alexandria Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita Zeina Azzam; a foreword by Washington Poet Laureate Emerita Claudia Castro Luna; and an appendix for use by poets and future poets inspired to write the land by project founder and director Lis McLoughlin. The fine contemporary poets in this anthology offer insightful and innovative verse that celebrates our deep connections to the land. This version of the book is for all readers.
Advance praise for Poems from the Natural Web: The First Five Years of Writing The Land
Wonderful what you have done here! This should be a most valuable resource for folks near and far...a lovely anthology inspired by rivers, winds, earthen contemplations, roots and sky.
—Scott Chaskey, author of Soil and Spirit
If we are to care for the land, we must love it. And if we are to love it, we must listen to it. The art of writing poetry requires deep listening to our own and the world's vulnerabilities. The poems in this anthology, carefully curated in conversation with each other, are testimony to five years of devotion. Let these poems work on you, and inspire you to care for the world that sustains us.
—Victoria Field, author of A Speech of Birds, Canterbury, England
Each instant of our lives the world speaks to us. But do we listen? Have we been listening?
With eyes wide open, with great skill and tenderness, each of the poets in this superb collection affirm that yes, some among us have been witnessing. [...] May you feel time stopping as you read, which is what happens when we are truly present, and when we love.
—Claudia Castro Luna, Washington State Poet Laureate (2018-2021)
About the Editor
Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She served as the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, from 2022 to 2025. Her publications include the full-length poetry book, Some Things Never Leave You, the chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, the collection Poems for Alexandria, and dozens of poems in literary journals and edited volumes. She is currently editing an anthology of nature poems tentatively titled Writing the Land: Poems Woven from Nature’s Web.
Zeina has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her poem, “You Birth the Seeds,” was set as a choral piece by renowned composer Melissa Dunphy. Her poem about Gaza in October 2023, “Write My Name,” went viral internationally and has been translated to over ten languages. A composer in The Netherlands also set “Write My Name,” along with three other poems of Zeina’s, as a choral suite titled “Four Songs for Gaza.”
For most of her professional career, Zeina worked in the fields of education and Middle East affairs, including 27 years at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Since 2016, she has volunteered as a mentor for We Are Not Numbers, a writing program for young adults from Gaza, and is now the poetry editor for WANN. She also volunteers with Grassroots Alexandria, a local group that advocates for the civil rights of vulnerable communities. Zeina holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University. www.zeinaazzam.com