janan alexandra ’13
Current Season Poet
Featured in Lit Hub’s “50 Contemporary Poets on the Best Poems They Read in 2024” and winner of the 2023 Adrienne Rich Award, poet janan alexandra established herself as a standout figure in the contemporary poetry scene long before her debut publication. It should come as no surprise that come from (BOA Editions, 2025) is a shining collection of self-examining, kaleidoscopic texts, and was described by poet Hafsa Zulfiqar as “a valuable addition to the long lyrical tradition of poetry that explores postcolonial migration, displacement, and diasporic narratives… [beckoning] the reader to go where there is love.”
For the Lebanese-American alexandra, the question “where do you come from?” has always been loaded. alexandra has spent her life calling various places home, including Cyprus, Lebanon, France, and the U.S, and these poems detail her attempts at defining an unanchored identity. In come from, a multifaceted exploration of diasporic identity, alexandra returns to her cultural roots through her re-learning of the Arabic language, retracing of childhood memories, and reworking of narrowly defined concepts such as origin and selfhood, reminding readers that “Assimilation lasts only so long before / we become our mothers & conjure a way / back to the homeland.”
alexandra’s reading (with Joan Kwon Glass ’98) will be followed by a conversation with Rebecca Hart Olander in Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, December 2 at 7 p.m. Free & open to the public. Books will be sold and a signing will follow. Livestream also available on the BDPC YouTube page.