Join me in this live, 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the ways that creativity arises from the soil of our most fundamental relationships – with the land, with our family history, with motherhood, and with our children.
My name is Camille Dungy. I’m a poet, writer, editor, and scholar who has published four volumes of poetry and two works of non-fiction. My creative work is driven by a multitude of themes but I find myself writing, again and again, about cultivation. The cultivation of our shared history, the cultivation of family, the cultivation of a relationship with the greater than human world, the cultivation of my own garden of earthly delights.
In my new book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, I write about the intersection of my two passions: being a mother and attempting to nourish a garden in my native Colorado. Soil tells the story of my efforts to rehabilitate the soil and introduce native plants, to create a life-giving space for my family and the local plants and animals during a time of global pandemic, an increased national awareness of social injustice, and the broadening trauma of environmental devastation. But I’m also interested in the history of gardens and public lands and environmental writing, which often excluded people of color and certain kinds of women as well.
For me, these subjects are as inseparable as braided roots. I see creativity as arising from the soil of our most fundamental relationships: with the land, with our family history, with motherhood, and with our children.
I’m excited to discuss these relationships with my old friend, Steve Almond, in our upcoming 90-minute session, Five Things I’ve Learned about Tending the Gardens of Creativity and Motherhood. We met in graduate school as single people without much to name as writers, and no land to grow on (I did keep houseplants even then). But we now move through the world as parents, working writers, and fellow gardeners.
I hope you’ll join us.
-Camille Dungy
Camille T. Dungy is a versatile writer, poet and professor who draws inspiration from her experiences in various regions of the United States and her extensive travels around the world. Camille's exploration of history, landscape, culture, family, and desire resonates throughout her work.
Camille is the author of four collections of poetry, and two novels, Guidebook to Relative Strangers and most recently, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, which recounts Camielle’s seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado.
Camille has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to bring African American environmental poetry to national attention. She also co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology and has served in several other editorial positions. Currently, she is the poetry editor for Orion magazine. Camille’s work has appeared in over 40 anthologies plus dozens of print and online venues in the U.S. and abroad. She is also the host of Immaterial, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnificent Noise. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Camille’s further honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.
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