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February Feature: Camille T. Dungy

Camille T. Dungy is a celebrated author and professor whose honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY ESF, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.

Camille T. Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. Soil was named book of the month by Hudsons Booksellers, received the 2024 Award of Excellence in Garden and Nature Writing from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, and was on the short list for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Dungy has also written four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She edited 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 served as assistant editor for Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, over 40 other anthologies, plus dozens of venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Poets.org. You may know her as the host of Immaterial, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnificent Noise. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy’s honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY ESF, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.




This’ll hurt me more


Don’t make me send you outside to find a switch,

my grandmother used to say. It was years before

I had the nerve to ask her why switch was the word

her anger reached for when she needed me to act

a different way. Still, when I see some branches—

wispy ones, like willows, like lilacs, like the tan-yellow

forsythia before the brighter yellow buds— I think,

these would make perfect switches for a whipping.

America, there is not a place I can wander inside you

and not feel a little afraid. Did I ever tell you about that

time I was seven, buckled into the backseat of the Volvo,

before buckles were a thing America required.

My parents tried, despite everything, to keep us

safe. It’s funny. I remember the brown hills sloping

toward the valley. A soft brown welcome I looked for 

other places but found only there and in my grandmother’s

skin. Yes, I have just compared my grandmother’s body

to my childhood’s hills, America. I loved them both, 

and they taught me, each, things I needed to learn.

You have witnessed, America, how pleasant hillsides

can quickly catch fire. My grandmother could be like that.

But she protected me, too. There were strawberry fields, 

wind guarded in that valley, tarped against the cold.

America, you are good at taking care of what you value.

Those silver-gray tarps made the fields look like a pond

I could skate on. As the policeman questioned my dad,

I concentrated on the view outside the back window.

America, have you ever noticed how well you stretch

the imagination? This was Southern California. I’d lived

there all my life and never even seen a frozen pond.

But there I was, in 65 degree weather, imagining

my skates carving figure eights on a strawberry field.

Of course my father fit the description. The imagination

can accommodate whoever might happen along.

America, if you’ve seen a hillside quickly catch fire

you have also seen a river freeze over, the surface

looking placid though you know the water deep down,

dark as my father, is pushing and pushing, still trying 

to get ahead. We were driving home, my father said. 

My wife and my daughters, we were just on our way

home. I know you want to know what happened next,

America. Did my dad make it safely home or not? 

Outside this window, lilac blooms show up like a rash

decision the bush makes each spring. I haven’t lived

in Southern California for decades. A pond here

killed a child we all knew. For years after that accident,

as spring bloomed and ice thinned, my daughter

remembered the child from her preschool. And now,

it’s not so much that she’s forgotten. It’s more that

it seems she’s never known that child as anything other 

than drowned. My grandmother didn’t have an answer. 

A switch is what her mother called it and her grandmother

before her. She’d been gone from that part of America

for over half a century, but still that southern soil

sprang up along the contours of her tongue. America,

I’ll tell you this much, I cannot understand this mind,

where it reaches. Even when she was threatening

to beat me, I liked to imagine the swishing sound

a branch would make as it whipped toward my body

through the resisting air. She’d say, this is hurting me 

more than it’s hurting you. I didn’t understand her then,

but now I think I do. America, go find me a switch. 


*previously published in Literary Hub, and The Best American Poetry 2021, Ed. Tracy K Smith, and There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love. Eds Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman. Penguin/Random House, 2021



in the hallway there used to be a hatch 


that opened to the attic. 

heat poured out in summer. 

one winter, frost collected 

around failed seals. we hired 

some guys to throw up new 

insulation. I wanted to leave

the crawl space, keep the hatch 

in case we had to hide people 

someday, but Ray reminded me 

they have infrared goggles now. 

so we asked the workers to cover

the opening with drywall and paint.

most of the time I forget that

would-be shelter was ever there.



Expectant; or, What the Transition Phase of Labor Confirmed about Being a Black Woman in America


I thought I would say, now!

and a new life would suddenly crown—


another beautiful, ordinary head

driven to split me wide open.


But look at me. Still 

on my hands and knees. Still pushing.


*previously published in Buzzfeed



True Story


The cat wandered between two women.

In one house, the kibble and clear water.

Sometimes, bits of roast chicken, even,

sometimes, translucent fish skin.

That’s the house that first called her

its own and, for all those nights until 

she found the other woman, she’d purred 

there without asking for anything more.

But, I’ve already told you, she found

the other woman. Whose house held 

the wondrous calm of no children. A blessing. 

Wet food in the kitchen. Catnip growing

for her in the yard. The women came

to be like sister wives. Accepting, if not

companiable. Opening and offering

everything when the cat came around. 

For years this continued. They lived

next door to each other, the women,

on the wooded west slope of a mountain

whose winding road runners liked to climb.

The cat lay her body down first on one bed

then on another until the arrangement settled

into a system as unremarkable as love.

One woman believed, as Issa believed,

that in all things, even the small and patient

snail, there are perceptible strings that tie

each life to all others. The other woman

was born in Chicago. There, the lake’s current

carried a black boy past some unmarked line

and a mob on the white beach threw rocks

until the boy was no more. She didn’t 

side with the mob, this woman, but she knew

where they came from. She came from 

there too. When the cat got sick, the woman

from Chicago wanted to put her down quickly.

Keep her from all this suffering, she said.

The other woman wanted not so much for her

to live forever as for her to fully live 

every second of her allotted time. Meanwhile, 

winter rain threatened the shallow-rooted 

eucalyptus on the hillside. Meanwhile, 

the runners still ran. The women argued 

in their divided driveway about how they’d prefer 

to die. Until she didn’t anymore, the cat 

continued eating in both the women’s houses.   


*previously published in Los Angeles Review of Books, June 2021


THE INTERVIEW

This interview was conducted between Camille T. Dungy and Jae Nichelle on January 7, 2025.


Thank you so much for sharing this brilliant work with us. I feel a deep resonance to “This’ll hurt me more,” especially in lines like “America, you are good at taking care of what you value.” I’m curious to know what you value these days and how you’ve been tending to those values.


I value my community, my family, the people who walk through this world alongside me on a regular basis. Sometimes this community I value lives in the same house, or the same town, but I also believe in the community I create through my words and actions. (Torch is part of this community!)  My people show up for me all over the world, and I place value on showing up for them as well. I am committed to being present for these people—my people—in a way that might mean I am less generically present to just any whosehisname out there. My daughter is a teenager, and I am intensely aware that the days of her needing me on a daily basis are numbered. I am committed to not taking this special time with her for granted. Similarly, my parents are in their 80s and though they are strong and healthy, I don’t want to take time with them for granted either. Every commitment I say “yes” to means other commitments I have to say “no” to. I am trying to be more mindful of what I choose to let go of so that I can more completely make space for what and who I need and want to prioritize.


These poems are story-driven, and I especially love how “True Story” directly addresses the reader/listener. What would you say is your storytelling philosophy?


I don’t know if I have a storytelling philosophy. My mind just works narratively. It’s a thing in our family to ask me first thing in the morning what I dreamt. My dreams are often wild rides, and they are almost always story-based. A couple days ago I had a long complex dream that revolved around taking my daughter to a ballet audition at a hotel and conference center where a friend of mine, who in the wide-awake world is a writer and ornithologist, was also staying. We saw him out on the small hills behind the hotel walking with another man and looking at a flock of female pheasants and their chicks. Between talking to the dance program director about the auditions and watching my husband participate as a stand-In for America’s top taste tester at the International Taste Testers competition (held at the same busy hotel), I thwarted an attempted coup and assassination attempt. My ornithologist friend was the target. He was about to be named president of Birders International, but the old guard didn’t like the idea of a Black man at the helm of their 250-year-old organization. They’d come up with an elaborate scheme to “get rid of him” in a "hunting accident." When I’d seen my friend out on that hill and waved at him and the would-be assassin, I messed up the whole scheme. My friend figured out what was happening and contacted law enforcement, who arrested the plotters. There were a lot more details to the dream than what I’ve just offered (the dance audition thread and the Taste Tester competition both wove back into the coup storyline by the end), but I shared this gloss so you can get a sense of how my unconscious mind naturally organizes information. Maybe it’s the All My Children I watched for the first few decades of my life. Or maybe it’s not the soap opera that caused it. Maybe I watched All My Children nearly every day for decades because wild interwoven ongoing storylines feel good to my brain. When it comes to writing, it’s not the stories that are the difficult part. It’s figuring out how to organize the several interconnected stories in ways that can make sense to other people and still retain both their weirdness and rightness.


Speaking of true stories, you’ve spoken previously about writing docupoetry and how “witnessing” is a key component of your work. How do you approach the act of witnessing—especially when it comes to difficult or painful subjects?


Witnessing is one of the tasks I believe writing must undertake. Writing must be honest. Writing must be urgent. Writing must mean something. Writing must matter. The world is full enough of fluff and distraction. The world is full enough of lies. If I am asking for your time, I intend to honor the gift you’ve given me by providing something true and substantive. Something worthy of your time. Writing from a place of truthful witness and honesty can be scary and dangerous and exhausting, but it seems to me that anything other than truthful witness and honesty is a fundamental waste of our time. I want to respect you and your time. I intend to offer you the kind of truth you need to read. To do this, I find ways to share the truth in a manner you will want to read. I offer beauty, paths toward joy and love. The world is full enough of unmitigated heartbreak. Truth told well can start to mend a broken heart. 


In an interview in 32 Poems, you mentioned that you used to play several instruments! If you had to pick today, what song and instrument would you play?


Oh goodness, that’s a curious question. You know, I am surprised by the answer that came first to my mind: I would participate in a bell choir. Maybe it’s because I am writing this so close to the holiday season and all those pretty Christmas carols are still in my head. I like the idea of being in a community of music makers, without whom I could not make the music, or I couldn’t make the music as completely as I could in communion with others. A lot of the other things I do with my time these days are solitary. I like the idea of showing up every Wednesday from 7-9pm to practice making music with a bunch of other people who are all pitching in with their small range of notes to make a sound that will fill a building and spill out onto the street.


What are your go-to dance moves?


I am raising a dancer, but I’m not the best dancer myself. Since I am raising a teenager who is a very accomplished dancer, I am made painfully aware on a regular basis of how completely not a dancer I am. Still, I do like to dance. I like a low drop and slight pop. I just looked up this move to see what the kids are calling it these days. I don’t appreciate knowing that my favorite move is called a “Slut Drop,” but there you have it. When I’m dancing, I like to drop it like it’s hot.


You’ve edited several anthologies in addition to being the poetry editor at Orion Magazine. What’s a lesson you’ve learned from your early editing days that has stuck with you?


I learned very early in my editing experience that I am partial to poems that open strong. You can catch or lose me as a reader in the first four lines.  There is such a thing as a slow burn, where the import and impact of the opening lines magnify as I move through the poem, but when I am reading hundreds of poems, if the first four lines aren’t reeling me in I am likely to move on to the next poem, and so will many readers. 


I want to add another important lesson, which is that no writer can please all readers, nor should they try. It is entirely possible that the few lines that don’t captivate me might prove utterly captivating to another reader. That’s one of the scariest and most liberating things about creating art. It’s hard to know whether something is working or failing based on anyone else’s opinion. Certainly not one individual reader’s opinion. You must learn to build your own set of criteria for success and failure and decide with each piece whether you’ve lived up to your own expectations or not.


Your work has expanded our collective archive and understanding of Black environmental poetry. Thank you! What further progress do you hope to see in this area?


I’m working on a project that I hope will offer an exciting answer to this question. More details forthcoming…. For now, I will say that one of the most exciting developments since the publication of Black Nature is how many Black writers are actively and visibly directly and creatively engaging with the greater than human world. When I edited and published Black Nature back around 2007 to 2010, it was possible for me to complete a thorough survey that identified most of the Black writers and writing that fit the category, even considering the ways that I worked to expand the existing limits of the genre. Such a comprehensive survey would be impossible today. So many writers finding so many ways to write about how we live and love and lose and work and dream in this immensely interconnected planet. That is thrilling to me! 


How can people support you these days?


Goodness. I love this question so much. Love how you’re always modeling ways we can lift as we climb. I said above that I want to write toward honesty and truth, so here’s one thing: I would really love to see Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden on the NYT best sellers list. Sometimes books show up on the bestseller list through a kind of exponential word of mouth whereby suddenly 8000 people buy a book for themselves and their friends and family and libraries and book groups in the same week. Since you asked, I’ll go ahead and write this wish so the universe (and the internet) can hear. If you’re buying or recommending books in the new year, please add Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden to your list.


Name another Black woman writer people should know.


I teach literature at the college and graduate school level and am often surprised by how many Black writers students don’t know. Then again, I don’t remember really knowing Audre Lorde’s work until I was in college myself, so I try not to be downcast about it. Everyone meets their heroes at some point, and not everyone can come out of the cradle knowing all the writers who will grow to be important to them. Hopefully, if you don’t already know the work of Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, and Anne Spencer you will find your way to their work soon. Then there are some of my peers who thrill me every time I pick up their books. Evie Shockley, Ruth Ellen Kocher, January Gill O’Neil, Duriel Harris, Remica Bingham-Risher, and CM Burroughs spring immediately to mind. But I’m actually going to use this space to speak to a fascinating book by a beloved peer. Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community, written by Vanessa Holden, uplifts unsung women heroes of our nation’s past. There are some painful truths in this book, but also necessary lessons. We’ve got to be thinking our way towards active resistance and sustaining communities, and Surviving Southampton is full of truths more of us could benefit from knowing.



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Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

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