{"id":136457,"date":"2026-01-16T17:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T17:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/136457\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T17:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T17:55:09","slug":"meet-berkeleys-new-poet-laureates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/136457\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Berkeley’s new poet laureates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Youth Poet Laureate Nolawit Ketema (right) and Vice Youth Poet Laureate Rachel Dunn after the award ceremony Tuesday at the Berkeley Public Library\u2019s Central Branch. Credit: Zac Farber\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n

Berkeley has crowned a new poet laureate and two new youth poet laureates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hanan Masri, a kindergarten teacher at Berkwood Hedge School, is the city\u2019s third poet laureate, succeeding Aya de Le\u00f3n<\/a>, who finished serving her two-year term in December.<\/p>\n

As poet laureate, Masri will serve as a \u201ccreative ambassador of the city,\u201d according to the city\u2019s website<\/a>, and will have a variety of official duties, including composing an original poem inspired by or related to Berkeley, coordinating public readings and reciting poetry at city events, including those held by the Berkeley Public Library.<\/p>\n

Masri will receive a $5,000 honorarium for her two-year term spanning 2026-27.<\/p>\n

Scroll down to read poems by Masri, Ketema and Dunn. And read a chapbook<\/a>by entrants to the youth poet laureate contest.<\/p>\n

Masri will also serve as mentor to the newly named Youth Poet Laureate, Nolawit Ketema, a 14-year-old first-year at Berkeley High School, and the city\u2019s new Vice Youth Poet Laureate, Rachel Dunn, 15, also a Berkeley High 9th grader.<\/p>\n

In their official capacity, Ketema and Dunn will have the opportunity to read poetry at library events and city functions, will lead a community art project, and will take part in writing workshops across the city. They will also be eligible to enter the National Youth Poet Laureate competition.<\/p>\n

While Berkeley\u2019s poet laureate program is relatively new \u2014 the first laureate, Rafael Gonz\u00e1lez, was appointed in 2017<\/a> and the first youth laureates in 2024<\/a> \u2014 Masri said that this has long been a \u201ccity of words.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spoken word and the written word is so valued around here,\u201d she said, apparent not only in the prestige of UC Berkeley and the many writers who inhabit the city, but also the plethora of Little Free Libraries, the placards and signs you see in people\u2019s windows or at political rallies, the Berkeley Poetry Walk<\/a> in downtown Berkeley, and on and on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWords are really important to the city,\u201d she said. \u201c\u200aThis is a city that really knows how powerful that platform is, especially given the time we are in now, to amplify our voices and to use them to promote what we know is just and right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poet laureate Hanan Masri: Title will \u2018place a little more fire\u2019 around her poetry<\/p>\n

\"\"Hanan Masri. Courtesy of the poet<\/p>\n

Hanan Masri started keeping a journal when she was 7 years old.<\/p>\n

This was around the time she moved with her family to Miami, after spending her childhood in various locales throughout the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon and Kuwait.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aMy first seven years of life was a lot of suitcases,\u201d said Masri, who is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent.<\/p>\n

She found that her journal was a place where she could \u201cdeposit all my thoughts and all these life events that were happening to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She calls writing poetry \u201ca lifesaving practice\u201d \u2014 \u201ca figure to hold me through the hard moments of my life.\u201d.<\/p>\n

Poetry \u201chas such an abundance of support for our thoughts and ideas,\u201d she said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t quite a genre that can be as flexible as poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masri\u2019s poetry explores themes of land and ancestry and what she calls the \u201cmitochondrial haunt\u201d of her mother\u2019s Palestinian heritage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things in our DNA that are only passed mother to daughter and are only passed down the matrilineal line,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I just became really interested in great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and then trying to make sense of it all with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masri is looking forward to her term as poet laureate as a way to deepen her practice and to \u201cplace a little more fire\u201d around her personal writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When she was 17, Masri traded the balmy shores of Miami for the cold winters of Providence, Rhode Island, where she studied American and English literature, with a focus on texts written by 20th century women of color, at Brown University. After graduating, she relocated to California as a teacher for Teach for America and taught at a variety of schools before landing at Berkwood Hedge in 2001, where she has been ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Masri is also a certified herbalist and nutritionist and the co-founder of High Road Scholars, a \u201cyouth engagement business\u201d that runs screen-free day camps for children aged 4-13, with an emphasis on nature, movement, the arts, cooking and the exploration of Indigenous cultures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Youth laureates Nolawit Ketema and Rachel Dunn: Inspired by English teachers and TikTok<\/p>\n

Ketema is the city\u2019s third youth poet laureate, and was officially appointed to her one-year term at an event on Tuesday at the central library in downtown Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been writing for a long time but I \u200aintentionally started focusing on poetry more in eighth grade,\u201d said the Berkeley High student.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of her inspiration comes from poets on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of my exposure [to poetry] came from TikTok,\u201d she said. \u201cMost likely because it was really accessible to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Youth Poet Laureate Nolawit Ketema\u2019s older sister Christian cheered her on at the awards ceremony. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of her,\u201d she said. \u201cShe actually didn\u2019t want me to come. She doesn\u2019t like reading her poems in front of me.\u201d Credit: Zac Farber\/Berkeleyside<\/p>\n

Ketema\u2019s work focuses on \u201cfeelings and experiences I\u2019ve been going through,\u201d she said, with a big emphasis on honesty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the poems she included with her youth poet laureate application, \u201cwhen a crow takes a bite out of my flesh,\u201d explores these themes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking about how pain can become so familiar that it really starts to feel normalized,\u201d she said about the poem, which she wrote late one night after a long battle with writer\u2019s block. \u201c\u200aSo writing that was trying to put that feeling into words in a way that made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

As laureate, Ketema wants to create spaces where young people \u201c\u200afeel comfortable expressing themselves through poetry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aI really want to help others find their voice,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what really matters to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ketema has already done this for her friend, Rachel Dunn, the new vice youth laureate. Dunn said that, when it comes to writing poetry, Ketema is \u201cthe person who has inspired me the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunn\u2019s first exposure to poetry was the writings of Shel Silverstein, and she said she\u2019s been writing \u201csparsely\u201d since the age of 5. But she was really motivated to write more this year by her ninth grade Berkeley High English teacher, Julie Panebianco.<\/p>\n

As vice youth laureate, Dunn looks forward to \u201cperforming and collaborating with others,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Poems by Berkeley\u2019s new laureates<\/p>\n

Green\u00a0<\/p>\n

By Hanan Masri<\/p>\n

O Berkeley\u00a0<\/p>\n

You gorgeous Boheme\u00a0<\/p>\n

with your Tibetan bling and cracked pepper fil fil falafel,<\/p>\n

the center crispy and green \u2018cause I know you got that parsley from the Arab Spring\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oakland broke my heart, Berkeley healed it.<\/p>\n

It was here that I met her,<\/p>\n

my heart leapt out of my chest like a hawthorn tree in winter,<\/p>\n

we listened to Al Green,\u00a0<\/p>\n

foraged for city sorrel,<\/p>\n

stuffed that verdant tang in dough and called it dinner<\/p>\n

Ample make this bed<\/p>\n

I trace my finger across this map,<\/p>\n

past war and gardens,<\/p>\n

azures and emerald,<\/p>\n

From Huichin to Here,\u00a0<\/p>\n

a love note nestled between ancient humps of breast stone,<\/p>\n

Beirut city\u2019s Green Line,<\/p>\n

there are no grenades,<\/p>\n

sages, mint, thyme, marjoram,<\/p>\n

the shepherds keep a pinch of zaatar in their pockets,<\/p>\n

steady the nerves,<\/p>\n

sumac brightens the blood,\u00a0<\/p>\n

the olives stain our DNA<\/p>\n

Five hours\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure when we\u2019ll leave this room,<\/p>\n

all of us, midnight\u2019s children.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you make your grass?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShow us your W2s\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you pledge allegiance to any flag with a band of green?\u201d<\/p>\n

In between the minutes, I think of you, Berkeley,<\/p>\n

Your placard filled windows,<\/p>\n

Your justice unhushed,<\/p>\n

California poppies blooming in your front yards, don\u2019t put you to sleep\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think of something I wish my mother had said,<\/p>\n

as Saturn\u2019s rings began to fade from around her neck,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tender rascals of women,<\/p>\n

electric wires of green,<\/p>\n

red splashes,<\/p>\n

We will make our own incisions,<\/p>\n

We will never beg for thread.<\/p>\n

My daughter, find the loudest people in the room<\/p>\n

and make friends with them\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

when a crow takes a bite out of my flesh<\/p>\n

By Nolawit Ketema<\/p>\n

when a crow takes a bite out of my flesh<\/p>\n

it does not flinch.<\/p>\n

it knows hunger like i know grief,<\/p>\n

a constant, gnawing thing,<\/p>\n

never full, never satisfied.<\/p>\n

it tears into me as if my body were soil,<\/p>\n

as if i were made for this,<\/p>\n

for the taking, for the losing,<\/p>\n

for the slow unravel of all that i was<\/p>\n

before the world taught me<\/p>\n

that pain is patient,<\/p>\n

that it does not need permission to stay.<\/p>\n

i do not stop it.<\/p>\n

i watch, numb, as it tears away pieces of me<\/p>\n

like the world always has.<\/p>\n

bit by bit, moment by moment,<\/p>\n

until i am nothing but a collection of gaps,<\/p>\n

a body shaped more by what is missing than what remains.<\/p>\n

the crow does not ask why i do not fight.<\/p>\n

perhaps it sees the way my hands tremble,<\/p>\n

the way my ribs rise like broken wings,<\/p>\n

the way my skin splits without protest.<\/p>\n

perhaps it knows what i have always feared:<\/p>\n

that i was never meant to keep myself whole.<\/p>\n

the crow only does what the world has taught it to do.<\/p>\n

it sees something broken and takes what is left,<\/p>\n

because that is the way of things.<\/p>\n

to strip, to consume, to leave behind only what cannot be used.<\/p>\n

perhaps i have been hollow for so long<\/p>\n

that i no longer know the difference between loss and relief.<\/p>\n

perhaps i was never meant to be whole,<\/p>\n

only something to be taken from,<\/p>\n

a feast for whatever finds me first.<\/p>\n

i press my fingers to the torn place,<\/p>\n

half-expecting to find nothing at all.<\/p>\n

but pain is proof, is it not?<\/p>\n

a reminder that something was once there,<\/p>\n

that something was worth taking.<\/p>\n

maybe that was the cruelest mercy.<\/p>\n

to be picked apart but never finished,<\/p>\n

to be emptied but never gone.<\/p>\n

to remain, in pieces, waiting for the next hunger<\/p>\n

to find me again.<\/p>\n

To Me, Too<\/p>\n

By Rachel Dunn<\/p>\n

O newborn bird,<\/p>\n

Living yolk<\/p>\n

Made of down,<\/p>\n

What is the world<\/p>\n

To you?<\/p>\n

Your mother,<\/p>\n

Made of wind<\/p>\n

And light,<\/p>\n

Is all the eye\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can see.<\/p>\n

She is to me too,<\/p>\n

As she obscures the sun<\/p>\n

For a second<\/p>\n

A blinding eclipse.<\/p>\n

As the sun returns to me,<\/p>\n

Showers me in orange light,<\/p>\n

I too am<\/p>\n

A living yolk.<\/p>\n

To me too,\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is the world.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Berkeleyside Editor-in-Chief Zac Farber was among the judges of the youth poet laureate competition.<\/p>\n

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