To kick off Black History Months here in the US, this week we revisit a best of conversation with award winning poet and University Distinguished Professor at CSU Colorado, Camille Dungy.
Camille Dungy is perhaps best known for her remarkable and award winning often environmentally focused poetry and editing of collections of environmentally focused poetry and writing by people of color exploring the intersections of gender, race, art, environment, and culture.
Camille is, as well, a University Distinguished professor at the University of Colorado, and an award winning poet, often referred to as an ecopoet. She has been recognized with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2021 she received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in recognition of distinguished poetic achievement. She has more than 9 books of prose and poetry to her name. Her latest Soil, the Story of a Black Mother’s Garden was published by Simon & Schuster on May 2, 2023.
In honor of the great and biodiverse exuberance that is May and upcoming mother’s day celebrations, we welcome Camille back to Cultivating Place.
Images courtesy of Camille Dungy, all rights reserved.
You can follow Camilla's work on-line at: camilledungy.com, and on Instagram: @camilledungy/
HERE IS THIS WEEK'S TRANSCRIPT by Doulos Transcription Service:
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JOIN US again next week, when as a mid-winter retreat, we head to the Cherokee Garden Library, at the Atlanta History Center in conversation with Staci Catron, Library Director, and Jennie Oldfield Senior Technical Librarian/Supervisory Archivist. This one will pair nicely with a warm cup of something on a cold afternoon.
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Thinking out loud this week:
So one of the things from this conversation with Camille that has really landed with me is the idea of Complicated blessings -and how our gardens and our gardening impulses sit and grow within this concept. So many complicated blessings around which the texture of our lives is heightened and the importance of how we harness our agency is implicit….
Thoughts on this anyone?
Riffing off the idea of complexity, the other idea from this conversation that I cannot shake is that of resilience and resistance.
When we consider the many many challenges our world faces at this exact moment, those troubles that keep us up at night, that hobble us with doubt and grief, I ask myself – through the lens of my garden: what have I not sufficiently resisted? Where have I resisted and proven once again that the garden life from a garden culture of care is one nexxus of resilience for our world. There is more we can more sufficiently resist. We’ll each have our own list to make.
That’s the kind of things gardening mother’s on this mothering planet do….
what’s on your list of resistance?
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