Marilyn Nelson Visits as 17th Westminster Poet

Renowned poet Marilyn Nelson visited Westminster April 17-18 to serve as the 2017 Westminster Poet. She met with students in their English classes and gave a reading to the school community in Werner Centennial Center. In preparation for her visit, students had studied her writing throughout the academic year. Nelson also served as the Westminster Poet in 2005.

 

A former Connecticut State Poet Laureate from 2001-2006, Nelson is the author or translator of more than 24 books, including those for children, adolescents and adults. She is this year’s winner of the prestigious NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. In 2012, she was awarded the Frost Medal, the Poetry Society of America’s most prestigious award, and in 2013, she was elected to The Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors.

 

Among her other notable honors are two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an American Council of Learned Societies Contemplative Practice Fellowship, the Commander’s Award for Public Service from the Department of the Army, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 

 

Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut. She earned a B.A. from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she started writing while in elementary school. Her father was a member of the last graduating class of Tuskegee Airmen, and her mother was a teacher.

 

In introducing Nelson to the school community before her reading, Lawrence Court, head of the English Department, said: “In many ways, Ms. Nelson’s work might be described as a form of imaginative archeology. She digs down into the marginalized histories of our country, often finding the literal stories of individuals and communities, in actual historical records, before poetically recreating them in the imagined worlds of her work. As we read her poems, wormholes suddenly open to the past, allowing us to time-travel for a moment or two to see the faces and to feel the presences of our nation’s ancestors and their rich and often troubling histories.”

 

 

After expressing how honored she was to be this year’s Westminster Poet, Nelson read from “Faster Than Light,” which won the 2013 Milton Kessler Poetry Award. She then read a number of poems from “Carver: a Life in Poems,” which was a National Book Award finalist and was designated both a Newberry Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She talked about George Washington Carver’s life history saying, “This is a book with a lot of different speakers because I didn’t feel comfortable writing in Carver’s voice.”

 

She then spoke about “My Seneca Village,” which introduces readers to a successful 19th-century multi-ethnic community located on the edge of what today is New York City’s Central Park. She closed by reading the poems “Conductor” and “Words and Whispers.”

 

During a question-and-answer session that followed, she said, “I find history inspiring.” And when asked whether she sees her work as important, she replied, “I hope I am making a contribution; some of my projects have taken off after the book.”

 

During visits with English classes, students asked Nelson about specific poems and her writing in general. In Emily Walsh’s Literature of Identity class, students had read “American Ace,” a collection of verse for young adults. “This book began because my father was a Tuskegee airman,” Nelson explained. “I wanted it to be about the question of identity, especially who we are as Americans.” Students asked her about how she decides what title to give each poem, how comedy plays a role in her writing and how she works with a publisher.

 

During another class visit, she described a writing technique she uses that “allows something to bubble up from the unconscious.” She added, “There is great pleasure in writing a poem that works.” She also shared that it takes a number of writing sessions of multiple hours for her to write a poem, and she often shares her work with a writing group in which she is involved. Regarding making historical poems true to history, she said, “I try to be accurate in every historical poem I have written.”

 

English teacher Michael Cervas, who directs the Westminster Poet Series, said: “Marilyn Nelson’s combination of accessibility and technical proficiency make her a perfect poet for a high school audience. Her wide-ranging curiosity, her empathy and her intelligence shine through her poems. She is also a generous and accomplished teacher.”