Writing Our Way Through: A Conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye
Join the Porter House Review in a conversation with acclaimed poet – and our professor at Texas State University – Naomi Shihab Nye as she generously discusses the role of the poet in a time of omnipresent political turmoil.
PHR Editors: Hi Naomi! Thanks for chatting with your friends and students over at Porter House Review. What projects are you working on these days?
Naomi Shihab Nye: Two new books coming out this year are Grace Notes: Poems About Families (my own poems) and I Know About a Thousand Things, The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas, edited by Marion Winik and yours truly. This will be a Wittliff Series book published by Texas A&M University Press. We feel lucky to have two esteemed Texas universities on board with our book by our great writer friend Ann, who died a few years ago.
PHR: How are recent events impacting your work, if at all?
Nye: Recent tragic world events, especially the genocide in Gaza, make me feel paralyzed and desperately sad. Creative work becomes more crucial for maintaining any semblance of sanity. I simply cannot grasp or accept the stone-age behaviors of nations and lack of empathy for all humans. Of course, I grieve the violence committed against innocent Israeli people and the wildly oversized vengeance by Israel, supported by the United States, that followed it. How do I speak of any of this as one little person?
PHR: What is the role of the poet during times of war, crisis, and political division?
Nye: The role of the poet is to try to keep speaking truth and shining a little light. The role of the poet is to stand up for human beings whose weeping voices are not being heard. The role of the poet is to make connections. My poems always stand up for humanity, hopefully. My slim book The Tiny Journalist tried to do this in every poem, I believe.
PHR: What is the difference between a “bad” political poem and a “good” political poem?
Nye: I don’t really favor calling things out as bad, except for stone-age weaponry and selfish, cruel politicians. Any poem that tries to speak up for truth or humanity would be a good poem in my opinion, but sometimes poems can be a little too didactic. Do this! Believe this! I don’t blame them though. We’re all desperate.
PHR: When you’re writing a poem that turns out to be about racism, war, or some kind of injustice, at what point, if ever, do you begin to think about your future readers? Or in what specific ways does your sense of audience change when you’re writing about injustice, racism, and war?
Nye: Poems are always trying to make contact, focus, find a voice that feels genuine. I must say the presence of “audience” becomes a gift a writer lives with—never feeling entirely alone, somehow. So, I guess I think about readers and writers as being of one tribe, one family, and I don’t think that sense of their presence really changes due to subject-matter. I definitely feel, when writing “politically,” that we make a chorus crying out for justice together—something like my husband and I felt when marching with 3,700 others at the Peace for Palestine rally on the main street of Honolulu the other day. Weeping to be part of a giant chorus invoking peace for people who can’t even hear us at that moment crying out—but the sense that none of us are alone in this concern felt supportive.
It’s very hard to believe people are losing jobs, being condemned for supporting fellow human beings in Gaza and Palestine. My new friend, the wonderful poet Jordan Kapono Nakamura of Honolulu, dedicated his recent poem “Interview” on Poets.org to people who are losing work because of their support for Palestine. My Palestinian journalist father used to say, “People really need more information.” If Americans visit the region and see how Palestinians have been treated for so long, their opinions often change.
People rarely mention that Palestinians are Semites too. So one might say the Israeli military and government itself has been, for a long time, excruciatingly anti-semitic. Why isn’t this ever pointed out? It’s bizarre. Also, if hostages were only released during cease-fire, why not cease for real? I salute all fellow Jewish brothers and sisters supporting Palestinians now and always. As a person from a West Bank family, originally of Jerusalem, made refugees in 1948 when their house was seized, I know the sorts of continuing horrors of injustice my own relatives have suffered for more than seventy years. If anyone pays attention to these facts, justice might be sooner in coming. Support education and food and healthcare, oh Americans! Stop sending weapons! This is an old, old cry.
PHR: What does poetry do that media or journalism often doesn’t or can’t?
Nye: Poetry cares. Poetry tries to sing the quiet, subtle stories. Poetry cherishes and protects details. Poetry listens to the ones who are not in the headlines.
PHR: Much of your poetry focuses on children and their innocence. Do these poems resonate differently in light of the crisis today?
Nye: The children are suffering problems the elders could not solve. Their pain and terror, their hope and apprehension of beauty and fun and future, should guide all our actions now and forever. How do we make them feel safe and treasured? I have always written for children in some way because they are most important and how we treat them is everything. They’re the best people.
PHR: What does it mean to be a Palestinian poet right now?
Nye: To be a Palestinian poet right now means caring more than ever about everything that makes us want to write poetry. We are here to love one another, to help, to support, to cherish. Violence gets us nowhere. Palestinians deserve all the human rights they have not had for so many years, just as anyone dreams of having. It is our job to speak of them and the injustice they have faced for so long in voices of peace and continuing hope. Because what else do we have? It is always our job as poets to make more connections. If we feel disenfranchised from official “positions,” we find ways to belong to one another through human-sized, gentle moves.
