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| Evie Shockley at the NEH Black Poetry institute at the University of Kansas, July 2015 |
I can’t remember if I ever mentioned here how poet-scholar Evie Shockley served as a crucial motivator for the poetry-related work on this blog.
Really, it’s true.
Some poets, not in a mean or rude way, will flat-out tell you that they don’t have the time or interest to read what scholars write about poetry. That’s understandable, I guess. Sometimes our work is necessarily dull and meticulous in ways that creative writers, not to mention the general public, might find off-putting.
A lot of times, if you write about Black poetry, you don’t dwell on the indifference. You just keep it moving.
But every once in a while, hold up, every once in a while, you luck up and encounter someone like Evie Shockley. A noted poet and scholar. And she shows up at just the right at the moment when you’re just beginning to write about Black poetry on your little bitty blog. You're nervous and uncertain and a bit directionless. And she encourages you to keep going. She informs and reminds you that what you’re doing matters. That the writing and reading and researching and blogging you’re doing is valuable. It’s useful. It counts.
And when you get that kind of encouragement, from someone like an Evie Shockley, like the Evie Shockley, then, well, you just keep it moving. You go from writing 3, 7, maybe 13 blog entries per year to publishing over 200 entries a year for a stretch. All focused on Black poetry, Black poets, and Black literary history. You got so immersed in the work that you forgot to tell Evie Shockley how she unknowingly sparked all that Black poetry commentary productivity.
But even if you do tell her she was one of the key motivators behind the output, she’ll smile, say “thanks,” and probably go right back to her usual: “Have you read so-and-so’s new book? Or so-and-so’s latest poem? It’s really great.”
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