“Camille T. Dungy is both an outstanding writer of the “natural world” and one of the most deft makers of metaphor working today. Her metaphors refuse to let the reader rest in their connections, but instead create a kind of friction in the mapping of vehicle onto tenor, an incongruity that invites the reader to follow the various threads of implication in an unlikely pairing. Perhaps the connection between those two strengths—unsettling, dynamic metaphors and precise observation of the natural world—is no accident.”
Camille Dungy
100 Poems to Save the Earth reviewed by Nation CYMRU
“And in one of the most restorative and uplifting poems, Camille T. Dungy’s ‘Trophic Cascade’ there is a bountiful account of re-wilding and what happened in Yellowstone when they reintroduced the grey wolf. This led to trees growing up ‘beyond the deer stunt/of the midcentury’ and with that the return of underbrush which ‘warrened snowshoe hare’ and soon the place, and thus the poem is full of songbirds, muskrats and American dippers while abundant berries bring in the bears.”
Check out Camille’s summer book recommendations on Orion!
Find the lists here
Camille to judge 2021 Splash Contest
Learn more information here
Camille’s poem “In her mostly white town, an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park, a black poet considers centuries of protests against racialized violence” is featured on Poem-a-Day
Two miles into
the sky, the snow
builds a mountain
unto itself.
Some drifts can be
thirty feet high.
Picture a house.
Then bury it.
[…]
Read the full poem here.
Camille featured on the National Endowment for the Arts Podcast
Listen here.
Camille’s poem “New Address” is featured on The Rumpus for National Poetry Month!
My name, Camille, means witness at the sacrifice.
What could I make of this when I was young? What sacrifice?
Coastal breeze and jacaranda trees when I was young.
When we moved, the hope of temperate weather was one sacrifice.
Keep reading here.
Camille’s poem “Let Me” is featured in The New Yorker
Let me tell you, America, this one last thing.
I will never be finished dreaming about you.
Camille joins AmbasciataUSA to discuss Black Nature Poetry
Watch a video of the discussion between Camille and moderator Anthony A. Deaton here.
Visual Poetics: A Poetry Reading with Evie Shockley and Camille Dungy
Watch the reading here!