Camille T. Dungy and Javier Zamora: September 28, 2017 (Updated 10 months ago)

The Poetry Center presents Camille T. Dungy and Javier Zamora, reading and in conversation. Camille Dungy reads poems from Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) and excerpts from her prose work Guidebook to Relative Strangers (W.W. Norton, 2017). Javier Zamora reads poems from Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). The readings are followed by a conversation with the audience.

Camille Dungy, as a former professor at San Francisco State University, explains that most of the poetry in Trophic Cascade was inspired by moving back and forth between San Francisco and Colorado, where she now resides. From Trophic Cascade, she reads "Against Nostalgia," "Natural History," "Conspiracy," "Frequently Asked Questions #7," "One to Watch, and One to Pray," and "Ars Poetica Apocalyptica." She follows with part of an essay from Guidebook to Relative Strangers titled "Inherent Risk, Or What I Know About Investment: On Balancing a Career, a Child, and Creative Writing," and the sections "Accommodation" and "Projection." She ends by reading "What I know I cannot say," from Trophic Cascade.

Steve Dickison introduces Javier Zamora. Between poems, Zamora describes his early life in El Salvador, his experience crossing the border into the United States, and stories about his family, all of which inspired the poems found in his book Unaccompanied. From Unaccompanied, he reads "To Abuelita Neli," "San Francisco Bay and 'Mt. Tam'," "Crybaby," "For Tia Mali," "Disappeared," "This Was the Field," "How I Learned to Walk," "Prayer," "Second Attempt Crossing," and "Saguaros." He ends with portions from the poem sequence "June 10, 1999," which he reads here, by request, for the first time in public.

Camille Dungy and Javier Zamora respond to questions from the audience. Asked if their writing has changed given the current political climate, Dungy answers that, while her writing has not changed, she is not surprised over the results of the presidential election. Zamora concurs: "We've all been living this shit. Nothing has changed. He's still a US President." Asked if they find inspiration in each other's backgrounds, Zamora says he was inspired to write on nature after reading Dungy's anthology, Black Nature. He encourages the audience members to read everyone and keep up with each others' work. Both poets discuss the importance of representation. Dungy considers literature to be "an exercise in radical empathy," and wants readers to get as close as possible to the vision she wants to share in her writing. Zamora discusses writing during a time when there were few undocumented writers writing about immigration, but continuing to write of experiences not widely available in published writing. Asked about the imagery of trees in their works, Zamora jokes that he didn't know he was a nature poet until other people pointed it out to him, but that being in the outdoors reminds him of his childhood in El Salvador. Dungy answers similarly, saying that nature reminds her of home in San Francisco while reminding her that there are entities in the world larger and more dangerous than her. They discuss the barriers they face in publishing as writers of color, and, in Zamora's case, as an immigrant. Zamora recommends persistent emailing in order to effect change, and Dungy encourages students to call and talk to people, as it is a mode of activism. They acknowledge the privilege of working as a writer, and the responsibility they feel to synthesize and write about history in order for the next generation to continue taking creative liberties when writing about historical moments.