In this essay for The Atlantic, Elliot Ackerman profiles Syrian refugee poets Aref Akrez and Ammar Tabbab, whose work gives voice to revolution, exile, and civil war.
Reporting from Gaziantep, Turkey, near the Syrian border, Ackerman explores how poetry becomes a way to preserve memory, identity, and the fading hope of a democratic Syria.
Syrian Poets in Exile
The essay follows two writers shaped by displacement: Aref, a former citizen-journalist from Aleppo, and Ammar, a Damascene poet and lawyer working on transitional justice.
Poetry, War, and Revolution
Ackerman examines how their poems confront loss, politics, sectarianism, and the emotional force of a revolution overtaken by violence and fragmentation.
The Art of Remembering Syria
At its center, the piece argues that Syrian poetry in exile is not only artistic expression, but an attempt to conjure and preserve a country disappearing through war.