Poetry is for Everyone: Maria Zoccola ’11 Inspires a New Generation

Poet and educator Maria Zoccola ’11 recently returned to St. Mary’s, where her love for writing began. Maria spent a week inspiring students as the 2025 Louise T. Archer Artist in Residence, just like her teachers did years ago.

Maria remembers receiving a graded paper back from former English Teacher Mrs. Charlotte Zehring with a note saying had a natural gift for writing – a moment that ignited her passion for creative writing.

“Mrs. Zehring’s care and attention lit up a path for me; she gave me a signpost toward my future,” Maria said. 

Maria earned a bachelor’s in English from Emory University and a master’s in professional writing from Falmouth University in Cornwall, England. Through her work at the Deep Center’s Young Author Project in Savannah, Ga., she inspired 400 students annually through creative writing and poetry workshops. 

During her residency at St. Mary’s, Maria continued this work igniting a passion for creative writing and poetry while encouraging students to realize the accessibility and value of poetry.

“Poetry is for everyone. Some people think of poetry as existing primarily within the confines of a textbook or of academia in general, or even worse, as existing within the closed cage of the past,” Maria said. “But poetry is alive, breathing, constantly evolving, and as vital now as it ever was hundreds of years ago.”

Through writing workshops, lessons, readings, and Chapel talks, Maria engaged students of all ages, encouraging them to explore what poetry is and why it matters.

In her Chapel speech, Maria said, “The truth is, I started writing poetry so that I could take that single step across the border between the understandable and the sublime, and as one of my favorite poets, Sophie Klahr, shared, ‘to find the little song that can hold a thing that otherwise cannot be held.’”

Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, and more. Maria has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize.

In the midst of all of these accomplishments, Maria's work continues to attract attention. Her debut poetry collection, Helen of Troy, 1993, debuts at Novel on January 14 at 6:00 p.m.