>> Ayesha Rascoe:
So glad to be here and
so honored to be
doing this panel.
I'm dressed for nature.
Flowers on my dress.
And, you know, I wanted to
say that I am-- First of all,
thank you all for being here.
And I want to say that I'm so
honored to be here moderating
this panel with this illustrious
panel I should say
with former U.S. poet,
Oh, my goodness,
let me speak right, former
U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo
and award winning author
and poet Camille T. Dungy.
[Applause]
And look, y'all, we have a big
treat for you because they are
going to do a reading right now.
Each of them. We'll start
with Joy of some poetry.
>> Joy Harjo:
How long do we have?
[Laughing]
I guess I can't do
a whisper on here.
Like how many poems?
Like 2 or 3.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: You could
do as many as you want.
We got time. We got--
>> Joy Harjo: Yeah. No. Yeah.
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
You know.
>> Joy Harjo:
I'm going to read a poem by--
This is from the anthology
"When the Light of the World was
Subdued: Our Songs Came Through"
a Norton Anthology of
Native Nations poetry.
And this is a poem
by Moses Jumper.
And Seminole.
And there's a quality in it
that's very similar to the
Mary Oliver. And
while I look for this,
I realize I hadn't marked it.
Oh, there it is. I found it.
It's very similar in the sense
that he's, you know, he's
listening. That's what one of
the things I take away from that
Mary Oliver's poem in general.
But that poem--
The poem that was just read,
Wild Geese, is that she's
absolutely listening.
And when you listen deep enough
and you go deeper and
then you go even deeper,
that's when you're listening
with your cells that are
connected to everything.
And I feel that in hers.
And I feel that with Moses
Jumper's poem and simplicity.
"The small tunnel which the
rabbit uses for escape and
travel. The small imprints of
the killdeer in the soft white
sand near the pond.
The fragileness of the newborn
doves and how the mother puts an
act, too, on an act to lure
away approaching enemies.
The unity of the small minnows
as they protect themselves by
staying near the
shoreline of the stream.
The clear whistling sound the
scorpion makes to let one know
he's near. The shagginess of
the owl's nest and the neatness
of the hummingbirds, the long,
graceful jumps of the sleek
green frog, the short, choppy
hops of the lumpy toad.
The Angelus and
grace of the order.
The awkward wing
flapping of the crane.
The camouflaged nest of the
mobile alligator and the will to
reach the water of her young.
The winding tunnels
that lead to nowhere
of the Sly Red Fox.
The abundance of life in the
wet season and stench of death
in the dry. The persistence of
the mother Hawk to nudge her
young to make their flight.
I saw all these things
and many more
and I knew they were right."
I love that poem.
So I'm going to read...
I'll just read a couple more.
This is a new poem, and I
always say you should not read
your new poem to a
big audience because
then you'll hear
how it doesn't work.
[Laughing]
And I didn't write this
thinking of I'm going
to do a nature poem panel.
I wrote it because I was
getting upset because we had
moved by the Arkansas River and
planted a lot of things and all
the animals were eating
everything before we could get
to them. So I left out the
peaches and other corn and other
things. But I wrote this poem
called Eat because that's a
nature too, If you think about
nature, I think about, yeah,
there's fire, the elements,
you know, it can be--
There's such a
romanticization of what nature
is, maybe even
what nature poem is.
And so I don't know that this
fits right into the slot of what
people think of when they think
of a nature poem.
But I had a good
time writing it.
Because we are connected.
"Eat."
"Grasshoppers devoured the
sunflowers pedal by pedal
to raggedy yellow flags.
Squash blossoms of small suns
blessed by dewdrops flared
beauty in the morning until
an army of squash bugs
landed and ate, then
dragged their bellies from the
carnage. Field mice chewed
their way into the house.
They eat anything sweet
and leave their pebbles
shed in staggered lines
to the closet door.
Hungry tree frogs cling to the
screen, their curled tongues
catch anything with wings
driven to the light.
We found a snake
hidden on the porch.
There were rumors in the yard
of fat mice frolicking here.
The night is
swallowing daylight.
We sit down to eat."
[Applause]
And maybe this
whole, I don't know.
As I was thinking about nature
poem, I think every poem has
nature in it. I mean, you think
about there could be no poetry.
There's seasons, there's
flowers, there's plants,
all of it. Sunrise, sunset.
What time of day?
But I will...
I will read.
I'll finish by reading
something in here.
Maybe I will read.
"Grace."
I don't know if this qualifies
as a nature poem.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: Well,
that's what we'll talk about.
We'll talk about what qualifies.
>> Joy Harjo: Yeah.
Okay, good.
[Applause]
"I think of wind
and her wild ways.
Here we had nothing to lose
and lost it anyway.
In the cursed
country of the fox.
We still talk about that
winter, how the cold froze
imaginary buffalo and the
stuffed horizons of snowbanks.
The haunting voices of the
starved and mutilated broke
fences crashed our thermostat
dreams, and we couldn't stand it
one more time.
So once again, we lost a winter
in stubborn memory.
Walk through cheap apartment
walls and skated through fields
of ghosts into a town
that never wanted us.
Like coyote, like rabbit.
We could not contain our terror
and clowned our way through a
season of false midnights.
We had to swallow that town
with laughter so it would go
down easy as honey.
And one morning, as the sun
struggled to break ice and our
dreams had found us with coffee
and pancakes in a truck stop
along Highway 80,
we found grace.
I could say grace was a woman
with time on her hands or a
white buffalo
escaped from memory.
But in that dingy light, it was
a promise of balance.
We once again understood the
talk of animals, and spring was
lean and hungry with the hope
of children and corn.
I would like to say with grace,
we picked ourselves up and
walked into the spring thaw.
We didn't.
The next season was worse.
You went home to Leech Lake to
work with the tribe, and I went
south and went.
I am still crazy.
I know there is something
larger than the memory
of a dispossessed people.
We have seen it."
Thank you.
[Applause]
>> Ayesha Rascoe: Now Camille
will do a reading from "Soil."
>> Camille T. Dungy:
So "Soil" is a
book length
nonfiction narrative.
But I'm a poet, so I snuck
poems throughout the pages.
And the book is about a
project, my family's project, to
diversify the landscape right
around us from the ground up
and the question is often why?
Why bother to go through what's
not always an easy project?
Here's one answer towards that.
"Let grow more
winter fat, wine cup,
western wild rose."
"So little open prairie left.
Little waves of bluestem.
Little fuzzy tongue Penstemon.
Quieter the golden currant
Nodding onion
quieter now as well.
Only a few clusters of
Colorado butterfly plants still
yawn into the night.
Where there once was prairie.
A few remaining fireflies
abstract themselves over roads
and concrete paths.
Prairie wants to stretch full
out again and sigh.
Purple Prairie clover.
Prairie Zinnia.
Prairie Dropseed.
Nodding into Solidago.
Bee balm brushing rabbit brush.
Prairie wants
Prairie wants
Prairie wants."
[Applause]
"Clearing."
"All night the wind blows.
And my mind.
My mind is like the hawthorn
that loses limbs.
They litter the ground, crushed
the black eyed Susan.
Scatter buds over rows of
lettuce, bean sprouts whose
greens are clusters of
worry in raised beds.
Blown leaves and cracked limbs
threaten our foundation.
Water backs up in gutters,
seeps into the house's walls.
But my mind.
My mind is not in the house.
In the yard's far corner, the
eye of my mind rests on a
Hawthorn branch.
Shaken, snapping,
hectic, then still.
The day dawns without anger.
The blue jay I've looked
for pushes sky off his crest.
How splendid
his wings and tail.
It's not so much that before
this he'd hidden himself.
It's only he favored a roost.
I could not see until the storm
thinned the tree.
And then I'm going
to read one more poem.
[Applause]
Thank you.
Thank you, all of
you, for coming.
It's such a, Joy, to read with
Joy and like, just a pleasure.
I can't wait for our
conversation, but this poem is
partially towards that question
of what is a nature poem?
Because I've long thought about
one of the problems with nature
poems being that people expect
them to be all about some sort
of sublime, pristine space
where no people are, which in a
historical context is deeply
problematic and removes the
existence of many people and
also experiences with the
greater than human world that
don't necessarily happen
in places absent of people.
And so I'm really thinking a
lot in a lot of my writing about
what it means to integrate
and interconnect our
conversations about the greater
than human world with
our conversations
about just people stuff.
So here is an example.
"In her mostly white town,
an hour from Rocky Mountain
National Park, a black poet
considers centuries of protests
against racialized violence.
Two miles into the sky.
The snow builds a
mountain unto itself.
Some drifts can be 30ft high.
Picture a house.
Then bury it.
Plows come from both
ends of the road.
Foot by foot, month by month.
This year, they didn't meet
in the middle until mid June.
Maybe I'm not
expressing this well.
Every year, snow
erases the highest road.
We must start
near the bottom and
plow toward each other again.
[Applause]
>> Ayesha Rascoe: Those readings
were just absolutely beautiful.
Thank you so much.
And so, Camille, I think this
is a perfect place to start
because you said something
interesting in an interview with
NPR. I know that's a shameless
plug, but I'm paraphrasing sort
of what you were just
saying is that, you know,
"Classic nature poetry"
or "nature poems"
sometimes have an absence
of family and community.
And that troubled you.
Can you talk about why that
troubled you, this idea of
nature without
people and community?
>> Camille T. Dungy: If in order
to truly enjoy and appreciate
nature the greater
than human world,
I have to do it in solitude.
It means that I
have no community.
I have no one else to help me.
I have no way of understanding
the ways that this planet is
deeply, intricately
interconnected and the necessity
of communion across species,
across bodies, across space and
time. And it's that sort of
understanding that there is no
away. When we throw something
away, we're just moving it to
another community's problem.
That when we
interfere with a
certain ecosystem.
We're interfering with a whole
community of interconnected
species. That sort of
arrogance, really, of the belief
and the necessity of solitude
is a path towards destruction
and really damaging isolation.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: So it sounds
like what you're saying is that
the idea that nature
poetry is someone
standing in their door
looking out on the expanse
and kind of ruminating
is not the only thing
that nature poetry can be.
>> Camille T. Dungy:
I do not believe it should be
the only thing that
nature poetry can be.
I just don't think that
that's the world that
most people can
live or should live.
I think most of us have
parents, siblings, children,
community, jobs, ways that we
have to be connected and held
down. And so if in order to
have communion with nature,
I have to disappear myself from
that part of my life and then
come back into some, like
what is that other thing?
Right? So I really want
to integrate all the
parts of my world so that I can
live mindfully and really
righteously in connection
with all life around me.
>> Joy Harjo: When I think of
that solo person, I think that
that the solo person
ruminating on nature came about
from a society in which usually
a male and somebody taking care
of the kids or they don't have,
you know,
there they are with--
>> Ayesha Rascoe: They're able
to think because they're by
themselves and they
can think big thoughts.
>> Joy Harjo: They don't
have other responsibilities.
>> Camille T. Dungy: Well,
with what you're saying,
but also came out
of a legacy of this
tragically and violently flawed
idea of these white men walking
across this unpeopled territory
simply because they didn't see
the other people existing on
that territory as people.
Right. So it's it's really a
deeply, deeply brutal way of
understanding the world as
opposed to understanding the
ways that people exist in
a different kind of support
system for each other.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: And eJoy,
obviously your signature project
as poet laureate was
Living Nations, Living Worlds.
That was a map that
you can still access
highlighting different
native poets and their work.
You know, obviously native
poets, poets are not monolith
and there's a wide
variety of work.
But do you have a thought of
the way a native poet or some
native poets may approach
the idea of nature poetry
that you think is
distinct or unique?
>> Joy Harjo: I think
we're all different.
We're a very
distinctly different.
But what connects us
is that we see the earth as
a living being and
we are part of it.
The world is not human centric.
We are kind of one circle
of consciousness, but there's
also a whale consciousness
and their world there.
Maybe they're central to their
world, but not in the way that
humans have made an art out of
it, you know, or a mess out of
it. But it's a whole
different way of approach
so that the earth is not seen
as dead and a place that for to
be mined for resources or
to be owned and utilize.
You see someone as a
being or as a someone,
then the relationship changes.
Versus as seeing them as a
slave or as something--
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
To rule over.
Do you think that there's
something that people can learn
from that approach, that
approach that is more looking at
the world as a part of a living
ecosystem and not something set
apart from themselves?
>> Joy Harjo:
Well, I think that we're being--
Because of climate change, etc,
we are being forced to
shift our collective thinking.
Part of that Living Nations
Living Words project was to
show the map that I chose shows
that North America, with no
names, no English, no names.
You could see earth, water.
I say sky sometimes, but you
don't see that on a map.
But I think about it and
there's none of those names.
And then the poets, there's the
poet with their poems that and
in their words,
talking about place.
And I picked that
map for that reason.
So is to say, here we are,
you know, this is what we're
part of it. At some point, all
this can fall away, even though
we're, you know, terribly
enmeshed in politics and naming
and all of the other stuff
that we're dealing with.
But in the end,
we will be in the earth
one way or the other.
We go back to that.
We come out of in a
very sometimes violent and
incredible process.
We come into this world
from Earth, from mother,
from Uganda Jaga.
And here we are.
Doing what humans are
supposed to do in the earth.
And the only thing I can
figure, because I don't think
we're biologically useful,
is that think about it.
What use are we is that we're
story gatherers and maybe we're
here to help with
the story, obviously.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: Oh, Camille,
you helped gather the story
because you are the editor of
a collection of nature poetry,
Black nature.
And you brought it from--
You pulled together nature
poetry from black poets,
obviously, who are not often
spotlighted in this genre of
writing. What made you want to
dig into what black poets have
been saying about
this, about nature?
And did something
stand out to you
when you were
pulling that together?
>> Camille T. Dungy: I read
some of my poems at an event
and somebody asked me
after the event like,
I've never really thought about
black people
writing about nature.
Do you know any other
poets who do that?
And I did.
I looked at my own
computer's collection of
poems I admire and
had 45 some poems.
And then I went and did a
pretty extensive literary review
to try and prove to the press
that this was a viable project.
And in thousands of journals
and major poetry anthologies,
I found six poems by
five black writers.
That was all I found. And so
what I then had to begin to
figure out was that what was
happening was that the ways that
black writers were writing
about nature and the environment
were often very different, and
they were often interconnected
in these kinds of ways that
Joy and I were talking about.
They might be talking
about economics or history or
culture or family, and they
were not that just solitary
person. And they might be
talking about trauma as
likely as they might be talking
about joy in some sort of
sublime connection.
And so the shifting of thinking
about what constitutes a nature
poem was part of what had to
happen for black nature, four
centuries of African-American
nature poetry.
So black people have been
writing in this way since the
very first book written by
a black person in the English
language. And that
has been happening.
But when Phillis Wheatley did
it, she talks about these
northern climes
forbidding her to aspire.
And that's, sure, the cold of
Boston, but also what it meant
to be an enslaved
person in Boston.
Right. Two different
kinds of climate.
And I think since the release
of Black Nature, the rise of a
kind of movement in poetry
called Ecopoetics has taken off.
And that is this what Joy is
pointing out, this partially
this attention to the dangers
of this current time and
environmental crisis and etc.
And so many more poets are
interweaving questions about
cultural and economic and
social and historical questions
into the nature poetry.
And so that shows up in the
work of black writers.
Yes, but I think
many more writers.
And so the window of
who is talking about
nature poetry and how has
really, it's like not a window
anymore. It's really like a
whole house that we've got.
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
Okay. And I mean, you know,
we're talking about
climate change, obviously,
when you're talking about
nature, we're at a point now
where nature is on fire, right?
The world is on fire.
How does nature poetry
rise to this moment when
you have, you know, human
caused climate change that is so
dangerous that is having
an impact right now?
How can poetry
rise to this moment?
>> Joy Harjo: I think it happens
in a natural way because
poets are when
we were witnesses,
we were witnesses
and of an age of a time,
of a place of a people.
And I think it
naturally emerges,
you know, the questions of
these times, the landscape, you
know, things shift
and culture changes.
I remember being in Alaska.
I've been up there many, many
times and I was there during the
one winter when the sun was
barely above the horizon, like
11 o'clock and I thought, Whoa,
my culture would not fit here.
It made me think about culture,
too, in writing, which it comes
directly in the
experience of landscape.
Culture is shaped from the land
and from landscape.
And then I think about what's
happening up there with the
melting waters.
What happens when you
know the caribou aren't there?
What happens when it all shifts?
The culture changes.
Even maybe, you know, which
means poetry or the landscape in
poems. It all shifts and
changes in ways that we don't
understand yet. I mean, it even
happens linguistically when I
help put together this anthology
of this Norton anthology,
we divided it up by
geographical areas, and it's
poetry, native poetry from the
beginning of, you know, people
writing poetry, natives of
North America writing poetry in
English until the present and
realized how, you know,
as we edited and read and read
and read about how tied language
is to environment and place and,
you know, to whether
if you're living on an island
2000 miles from the continent
or, you know, it
shifts, language shifts,
even if it's in English even
then or if you're, you know,
way up in the ice or
everything, it shifts.
Our language and the
poetry and in our cultures are
so embedded or emerge.
I don't want to say embedded.
They emerge from place.
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
Camille, in Soil, you write
and I say Soil because
I'm from Durham, North Carolina,
so forgive me.
[Laughing]
Whether a plot in
a yard or pots in a window,
every politically engaged
person should have a
garden. And I'm sure you've
been asked this a lot,
but tell me why
you feel that way.
And what about those of us
who kill plants all the time?
>> Joy Harjo: You
get some help. Yeah.
[Laughing]
>> Camille T. Dungy:
I love that interchange
between soul and soil,
which I do sometimes
when I type the title.
I think that they are actually
interchangeable words.
Which is part of why I think
having green living things
around you is important.
It's part of why I had the pot
in the window as, in addition to
the plot in the yard, because I
know that not everybody has
access to and actually honestly
should have access to giant
tracts of land for a multi acre
kind of garden experience.
I think that working with
plants has taught me patience,
humility, right?
I kill things.
Plants don't always work in all
conditions, and they won't grow
the same in all
kinds of situations.
And a rabbit will come and eat
something of yours, or the bugs
will come. And learning how to
be patient, how to be flexible,
how to adjust to changes in
climate and weather, knowing
that some things kind of go
into dormancy
and may or may
not rise up again.
That has taught me a kind of
way of being in my soul, right?
Working with the soil in that
way has taught me a way of being
in my soul that is trusting
of the work that it takes to
make the kind of changes
in the world that
we'll build a world that I
want to see for myself, for my
daughter, for my daughter's
children, should they exist
that long quietness
into blossom.
Quietness into blossom.
Oops, I did that wrong.
I better try that
again a different way.
All of that is instructive
and sustaining to me.
And at the same
time, I get these--
Often get these beautiful
other beings that I get to live
alongside. And so that's
the best bonus I can imagine.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: I think that
when we talk about connection,
that brings me back
actually to Mary Oliver.
And I wanted to talk to both of
you about the connection between
poetry and prayer or poetry
and spirituality,
nature and spirituality.
Obviously, this
is something that
Mary Oliver dealt with a lot and
she dealt with it in her poem
"I Happened to Be Standing."
It starts with the line, I
don't know where prayers go or
what they do.
Do cats pray while they
sleep, half asleep in the sun?
And Joy, you have a poem,
Eagle poem and it begins.
I'm not going to read it as
well as you, but I'll read a
little line.
To pray, you open
your whole self
to sky, to earth,
to sun, to moon,
to one whole voice that is you.
And so I want to ask you, you
know, what do you make of that
link between nature
and poetry and prayer?
>> Joy Harjo: I think the
connection here, like with
what you were saying and
the connection with the
plants is that, you know,
your life is a kind of prayer.
I mean, you come out,
you learn to stand.
And you learn to move
towards the living.
I think that in and of
itself is a kind of prayer.
Like Coltrane with his horn.
That's what I love about John
Coltrane is he was in prayer.
He said that, so to speak,
is that it's all you.
I think you come to that at
some point, and that's certainly
working with plants.
You know, what they teach you
is that they are themselves.
And they accept,
they are in grace.
Even if you manage to kill them
without trying or however, they
are absolutely who they are.
They're not saying, Oh,
why did you make now?
And they do talk, but
that's another story.
But I don't want to
turn this sideways.
[Laughing]
But they're being absolutely
they're being, you
know, in a cat in the tree,
all they're being absolutely
who they are.
They aren't haunted in the way
that human beings are haunted.
And so I think of almost
every poem as a prayer.
Like, here I am, I'm alive.
Here's my voice.
I'm alive. Here's another leaf.
You know I'm alive
and I can speak.
I'm still living.
And I think something like that.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: Camille,
what do you make of this idea
of nature and spirituality? I
mean, there's this, sometimes
in, you know, Western theology,
it'll be like, well, why do you
think about Mother Nature?
You know, it's much more
monotheistic or whatever, but
what do you think
about that idea?
>> Camille T. Dungy:
I mean, I have a whole lifetime
of asking that question.
I'm the granddaughter of
an American Baptist preacher.
And I lived for a while in a
town that where his first big
church was. He
wasn't there anymore.
But people expected me to go
to that church all the time.
And it didn't always work
for me. My answer that I would
have was, this Sunday, I'm
going to go worship
in the Church of God and the
great outdoors,
because that too, is a space of
deep communion and connection.
That ability to hear
how other beings talk.
Right. And to learn to trust
the messages that I can
receive from lives beyond the
human feels to me like an
exercise of deep faith and deep
access to something larger than
me, which feels wonderful
and humbling and empowering,
all at the same time.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: Well, I
feel like so much of this
that we're talking about
with this work is
the idea because you talked
about, Joy, how nature poetry is
hearing. I was thinking about
it, about how nature poetry is
to help people to see
the world around them.
Because and when I'm talking
about sight, obviously, you can
walk around every day and never
see anything in the world
around you. Like, I wonder if
both of you can talk about
how can people who are not
writers tap into that sort of
meditative observation and not
feel like maybe it's a luxury
that they don't have because
they're too busy paying bills
and doing this or that to really
take time to take things in.
>> Joy Harjo: And I find
it often at dusk or sunrise.
There's something
about that light.
And I was thinking as a young
mother, too, I often found at
washing dishes before
dishwashers or before I could
afford a dishwasher, you know,
just in that kind of those
meditative moments.
But there's the thing.
It's sunrise, in cultures all
over the world,
you know, that's when
people go out to greet.
It's a powerful moment because
the sun is gathering power and
coming across and you go out
and say thank you or say
acknowledge the gifts and send
out prayers or poems or songs
to be helpful.
And the animals
are out there too.
The Robins, I've noticed they
have what they in our tribal
nation, you would call a
speaker who goes out there and
tells everybody what to do and
tells everybody what's going to
happen during the day.
The same thing at dusk.
We all have that. At dusk,
you'll find people
out everywhere.
And all the animals, you know,
their songs change, you know.
And the plants too.
I've watched them.
There's a different mode.
You kind of go into a different
mode of singing and
acknowledgement and saying
thank you and letting go.
If we would all remember this
and would just let go
at that time.
We could let go of
a lot of things that
hurt and harm and torture us.
>> Camille T. Dungy:
I feel like most of us don't
want to be machines, right?
And so even if we're working
really hard and super busy,
the difference between being
human and being machine may
simply be having the autonomy
to choose where and how we place
our attention.
And so having the autonomy
to ask a question,
what is the Robin doing?
What is the robin saying?
What sense do I make of that?
Having the autonomy to pay
attention to the sensual
experiences of the world and
pay attention to smell and taste
and how the air feels
on your skin, that is
what being a poet in the
world feels like to me.
That's the sort of if somebody
were to say, How are you poeting
in the world? The one thing
that I would say is that I am
deeply sensually involved and
attentive in that way.
And the second thing I would
say is I ask questions
all the time. And I'm wondering
and I'm curious and I'm not
always seeking an answer
so much as seeking where the
next question leads me.
And in a time of so many crises
and on top of it, the busyness
of daily life, taking the
time to ask new questions
is the way that novel
opportunities, be it poetry, be
it solutions begin to show up.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: I think we
have about ten minutes left.
We're going to try to take
questions from the audience.
But before we take questions, I
got to give you a little rule.
Don't just give a comment.
Actually think is there a
question mark at the end of this
question? And then
stick to one question.
And so we're going to
see if we can do that.
We got about ten minutes left.
So please come up.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
So you want to go
ahead and get started?
>> Hi there. Thank you so much.
My question is as a poet who
is so grateful to hear your
thoughts today is
sometimes I'm not sure what to
do with pronouns when I want to
talk about the greater
than human world.
So I'm wondering if you have
any questions or recommendations
about how to speak about the
greater than human world,
especially with our pronouns.
>> Camille T. Dungy: I really
try to avoid the pronoun 'It'
because Robin Wall Kimmerer
writes about this really well
in braiding sweetgrass. If you
haven't read this, that sort of
objectification of another being
that the pronoun It uses.
But the other thing is that
actually is not usually
accurate. Many other beings are
gendered and sometimes in ways
that are complicated because
they carry both genders, etc.
And so I like to name
when possible or create
sort of more intimate kinds of
pronouns that are not as
cold as it feels.
>> Joy Harjo: More more along
the same lines as Camille here.
And I've had copyrighted,
I mean, not copyrighted,
copy edited manuscripts
come back because
I've called the Earth Her or
said They or Them instead of It,
you know, or trying to
correct me and I say,
no, that's how it is, you know.
>> Camille T. Dungy: Like
using Who instead of That.
And the copy editors
will come at you
and I just stand my ground.
>> Joy Harjo: Yeah. It changes
the relationship though.
It does change the relationship.
It makes the relationship.
>> Camille T. Dungy: And it
makes language more complicated.
Sometimes you've
got to do more in the
sentence. But that's great.
You're a writer.
Having something that
challenges you to write more
complicatedly with more care.
That's worth it.
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
Okay, let's do another question.
>> Hi. I was wondering, for
those of us who live in cities
with a few trees and a
postage stamp backyard,
how do you look at the value
of the mingling of the human
and more than human world,
whenever it comes to your
connection with nature?
>> Camille T. Dungy:
I've lived big chunks of my life
in urban areas, and once
you start to pay attention,
you'll see a lot
of non-human beings
around you. It's not just the
trees and the postage stamps.
There's all kinds of mammals
and birds and insects and air to
start to pay attention to
the way that other beings are
cohabitating in these urban
spaces can be really
exciting to me.
So that would be my suggestion.
Do you have one?
>> Joy Harjo: Yeah. There
is a difference though.
I mean, you're still living on
Earth and you know, and
you're still dealing with
the same elements and so on.
But there is a difference.
I mean, I just went from living
in downtown in a little
apartment in downtown Tulsa
above a bar to out in the
country, you know, by the river.
And it's, you know, nature's
noisy, too, but bar is noisier.
[Laughing]
But even in a city, I mean,
you're still located on land.
You know, you're
still dealing with water,
even the water that
comes out of your...
You know, saying thank you.
The water that comes out
that you drink even in a bottle.
Be aware of that kind of action.
Even if it comes through
the pipes, it's still water.
>> Camille T. Dungy: Part of
what I'm hearing you say is
not to fall into the trap,
that it has to be this pristine.
To write about nature doesn't
mean it has to be like pristine
and sublime and that kind of
way that that those concrete
rivers are also
have a thing to say
and about what you can write.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: And there are,
you know, raccoons and stuff.
There were some on my roof.
You know, whole family,
you know, they're around.
Yes. Oh, wait, do we still
go over here? Yeah, we were.
Yes, over here. Yes. Go.
>> Thank you.
I just wanted to say also,
I am a fan of your work, Joy.
I did a project on
you in middle school.
But also I feel like often
it can be so difficult,
with the craziness and
hecticness of life, even when
we have the opportunity to be
completely surrounded by nature.
Sometimes I find it difficult
to, like, get in a headspace
where I'm kind of not just
thinking about everything
I'm not doing.
Do you have any ways that like,
you can get out of that,
that you use? Thank you.
>> Joy Harjo:
That happens to me a lot.
I mean, I think I'm half
intuitive and half analytical
and the analytical,
I think it gets fed by emails
and deadlines and texts and
all of that stuff.
It helps the center
on breathing even to go out and
walk and to center on breathing.
I mean, it sounds you
see that everywhere and
people say that, but it really,
really works.
Just stop and take a breath.
And make it long and
make the counts long.
And it really does work.
And then I've started looking
at my life and thinking,
What is it am I here to answer
emails or...
which are necessary to
work and all of that.
But it's good to journal.
That's another good thing.
And I've started really
journaling again, not on the
computer because I
will get distracted.
I'm easily distractible.
I've been back to writing in
notebooks. And there's
something about that taking the
time and that's where
that new poem came out of.
I was just sitting
and just writing.
That helps. You don't have to
be a poet or a writer or,
you know, if you keep
writing and don't think about
what you're writing, just write.
I think it's the way of
the natural world,
of your spirit, your
guardian to speak to you.
And that helps. There's
something in that action
that can help clear your mind
and just give you some space.
[Applause]
>> Ayesha Rascoe: I think we
have time for one more question.
So, yes, you go ahead.
>> Thank you. It's been
wonderful and inspiring
to hear the conversation today.
Ayesha I'm a big fan, but
ladies, I would really love for
you to talk about--
I'm an elementary music teacher
and I use poetry within my
lessons to inspire the
kids to create music.
Is there any particular poem or
poet or topic even that
you would recommend
that I look for sources
for my lessons?
>> Joy Harjo: I don't know.
There's just so many.
There's your anthology.
We have an authors anthologies
out there that collect work.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: So maybe
the Norton Anthology
that you just did--
>> Camille T. Dungy: The Academy
of American Poets has a whole
teacher support section
on their website
that you could also turn to.
>> Awesome. Thank you.
>> Camille T. Dungy: I kind
of want this last person--
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
Do you have a question?
Yes, please. Please, please.
>> I enjoy writing and I was
wondering how do I get into the
headspace and get the
motivation to write?
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
That's a great question.
>> Camille T. Dungy: Well, Joy
had some really great answers
for that other question.
And I think all I would add
to that is to trust your
right to be doing this with
your time and your priority,
to make it a priority to like
believe in yourself, that
this is what you should be doing
with your time and with that
sort of self empowerment.
Be willing to take risks.
>> Joy Harjo: Yes, sometimes
what happens to me because
I can get stuck too. As
I say, I'm going to write
something very badly.
[Laughing]
I'm going to write whatever.
I'm going to just write badly
and something
in that just lets it go.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: I think
there's something in
putting words on the page.
I'm not a writer like these
wonderful ladies, but
I write a little bit. But just
put some words on the page.
Just get them on there.
>> Joy Harjo:
They attract other words.
You put a word down,
another one follows
and then another one.
And another one.
>> Ayesha Rascoe:
But thank you so much.
I think we're at
one minute left.
So thank you so much.
This has been just
a joy and an honor.
Give them a big round
of applause.
[Applause]
>> Joy Harjo: And you.
>> Ayesha Rascoe: I have to say,
those were excellent questions.
Everyone had great questions.
Thank you so much.
[Music]
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