Black people dont write about nature. Black people dont recreate outside. Poetry is too hard to understand.
Camille Dungy challenges these common misperceptions in her work, her play and her words. The writer, editor and professor of English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins will speak Friday in Lewiston as part of the 35th annual Stegner Lecture.
Nature shows up in Dungys poetry and prose, and she spends time outdoors hiking and kayaking. But black people arent always seen in these spaces, she said. Thats changing. In 2009, she edited Black Nature, a collection of nature poetry by black poets -- the first anthology of its kind, despite the high number of existing poems. Coincidentally, right about that time, an online community called Outdoor Afro was started to connect black people with the outdoors.
In a phone interview, Dungy shared a bit more about her take on nature, poetry and the West:
On what draws her to the West: The landscape is better. I like the openness, I like the dryness -- other people dont, but I do. People here in the West, we believe in the future, in possibility and in making the best of things.
On how nature came to influence her writing: I grew up in a planned community of tract homes right on the edge of Irving, Calif. We lived on the outer edge, on this border between this community and the wild. I had a lot more fun playing there in the wild space than the greenbelt that was crafted for the community.
On why black poets who write about nature havent always always been seen: People think black people arent attached to the environment. Sometimes thats because they write differently in their response to the natural world. Theyll speak to the threats and dangers as opposed to finding peace. The current movement in environmental writing makes a lot more space for that. Now theres space for feeling sad, scared, confused.
Advice for people who dont like poetry: Read my book of essays. (Laughs.) In my experience, even when someone says I dont get poetry, if you put a poem in front of them they get it -- they understand. They just dont trust themselves. Stop pleasing your seventh grade teacher -- theres no quiz. We can just say, Look, does it make you feel something? You dont have to name it, just feel it and move on.
On what draws her to poetry: Its concise. And its pretty. (Laughs) And its a way of saying things more efficiently. I like essays too, but theyre longer to write. Which counterintuitively was useful when I had a young child. I could start writing, then walk away and come back.
Language Silence is one part of speech, the war cry of wind down a mountain pass another. A stranger's voice echoing through lonely valleys, a lover's voice rising so close it's your own tongue: these are keys to cipher, the way the high hawk's key unlocks the throat of the sky and the coyote's yip knocks it shut, the way the aspens' bells conform to the breeze while the rapid's drum defines resistance. Sage speaks with one voice, pinyon with another. Rock, wind her hand, water her brush, spells and then scatters her demands. some notes tear and pebble our paths. Some notes gather: the bank we map our lives around. From Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille T. Dungy.
IF YOU GO:
WHAT: Stegner Lecture: The Native Home of Hope
WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday
WHERE: Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History, 415 Main St., Lewiston
COST: Free