Interviews | June 02, 2021

A Conversation with Camille T. Dungy

Jacob Griffin Hall

Camille T. Dungy is a poet, essayist, professor, and editor based in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Trophic Cascade, Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow, and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. Dungy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and her debut collection of personal essays, Guidebook to Relative Strangers, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has edited several anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her work has appeared widely in anthologies and in literary magazines, including Poetry, American Poetry Review, VQR, and Guernica. Dungy is currently a University Distinguished Professor, teaching in the English department at Colorado State University.

This interview was conducted by e-mail between December 2020 and February 2021.

Jacob Griffin Hall: Could you tell us a bit about what initially drew you to writing poetry?

Camille T. Dungy: I grew up in a family that values literature, poetry included, so I was reading poetry and having poetry read to me from a very young age. I remember memorizing my first poem in kindergarten or first grade. I have always loved the taut power of a poem. The way some of us love watching world-class sprinters do their thing. Those quick bursts of power and import. That’s exciting.