{"id":9479,"date":"2024-12-05T16:01:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=9479"},"modified":"2024-12-05T16:01:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:01:30","slug":"rooted-in-words-an-interview-with-professor-elkins-about-her-poetree","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-november-2024\/rooted-in-words-an-interview-with-professor-elkins-about-her-poetree\/","title":{"rendered":"Rooted in Words: An Interview with Professor Elkins about her Poetree"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Peyton Williamson ’27<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fresh from a new move over the summer, Professor Amy Elkins, inspired by all kinds of community engagement activities, decided to start posting poems on a hackberry tree in front of her house. What started as a fun undertaking quickly became a lovely way of assimilating into her neighborhood and spreading the poems’ impact into more unexpected places. The Words<\/em> had a chance to interview her and learn a little bit about what inspired the project and how it has grown since it began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A featured poem from the Poetree, \u201cWild Geese\u201d by Mary Oliver.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What inspired you to start this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love Little Libraries, public murals, and other community arts and literature projects. I moved over the summer and felt a strong sense of community in my new neighborhood, and I was thinking of ways to share things I care about with my new neighbors. I\u2019d initially thought I might create a gumball machine that dispenses tiny poems or artworks, but I kept running into problems with logistics. Then, one day kind of out of nowhere, the idea for a Poetree popped into my head! I had a medium-sized tree in front of my house on the boulevard, and I thought, ah ha<\/em>\u2026that could be just the place for sharing a poem each week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you come up with the idea of combining poetry with nature in this way?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love poems and books about trees. One of my favorite books is Casting Deep Shade<\/em> by C.D. Wright. It\u2019s a sort of poetic, memoir, research project on beech trees, and it\u2019s a huge volume with gorgeous photographs by Denny Moers. I love nature poetry, and I love reading poetry in nature. The Poetree creates an unexpected encounter with really good poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Poetree in all its glory, a medium-sized hackberry tree.
<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How do you go about selecting the poems you include? Do you choose specific themes for the poems, or do they reflect things like your thoughts, experiences, or the season?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m very intentional about the poems I select (and I take requests through my mail slot!). The first poem I selected was Ada Lim\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s the Season I Often Mistake,\u201d which is about early fall and a speaker who feels herself both overwhelmed by and in awe of \u201cthe perpetual \/ scattering that unspools the world.\u201d The poem mentions a hackberry tree, which is what the Poetree is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also had fun with the Halloween poems, such as \u201cSong of the Witches\u201d from Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth<\/em>: \u201cDouble, double toil and trouble.\u201d But the poems I select are sometimes more serious or political. After the election, I posted Mary Oliver\u2019s \u201cOf the Empire\u201d and local poet Danez Smith\u2019s \u201cLittle Prayer.\u201d Poems that both comfort and get you in the gut at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Poetree logo, taken from \u201cSilver Apples,\u201d a hand-colored woodcut by Victor Brown (1900-1953) that illustrated a poem by W.B. Yeats, printed by his sisters who ran the Cuala Press.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Have you noticed any impact on your local community or neighborhood since starting this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I post a new poem each Sunday, and I\u2019ve heard from neighbors, even some I don\u2019t know or haven\u2019t met in person, when a particular poems resonates with them. I also had a friend on the East Coast reach out to ask about starting a Poetree at her house! Part of the beauty of the project is that it\u2019s simply an offering. In many ways, I can\u2019t know what sort of impact it\u2019s having, but I enjoy the process of sharing poems with enduring messages of hope, love, grief, determination, friendship, et cetera. I did think it was funny, though\u2026.one of my neighbors asked for shorter poems through the winter season so that they can keep moving on their walks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has been the most rewarding thing about the project for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I see someone stopping to read! I\u2019ve seen just about every age of person, from a kid skidding up to the tree on his bike to elderly folks moving slow, spending time at the Poetree, and it always makes me feel that the world, in a small way, is a slightly better place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Words<\/em> would like to thank Professor Elkins for taking the time to chat, and we look forward to reading more wonderful poems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Peyton Williamson ’27 Fresh from a new move over the summer, Professor Amy Elkins, inspired by all kinds of community engagement activities, decided to start posting poems on a hackberry tree in front of her house. What started as a fun undertaking quickly became a lovely way of assimilating into her neighborhood and spreading […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":9461,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9479","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9479"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9507,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9479\/revisions\/9507"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}