{"id":1323,"date":"2024-04-24T01:44:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T01:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amycondra.com\/?p=1323"},"modified":"2024-04-24T01:50:24","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T01:50:24","slug":"writing-eden-lecture-to-feature-poet-emily-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/?p=1323","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Writing Eden:\u2019 Featuring poet Emily Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article first appeared in the Juneau Empire<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Amy Condra<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alaska attracts adventurers, people who come for the tall mountains and the deep rivers, who envision themselves discovering something new even as they lose themselves in an ancient wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among these dreamers from down south are the artists who want to capture the less tangible aspects of the quest: An image, a rhythm, a phrase, that will evoke what it means to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for writers, describing a place so larger-than-the-usual-life can be hard to do; too often, the words and phrases used to convey Alaska\u2019s vastness can dwindle into small stereotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI grew up in inner-city Portland,\u201d said local poet Emily Wall. \u201cIt\u2019s almost easier to write about nature in tiny restricted places. Here, oh my God, where do you start? It\u2019s so large!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wall, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Alaska Southeast, will be reading her poems at next week\u2019s Wildlife Wednesday, a lecture series sponsored by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, a nonprofit organization committed to the conservation, protection and promotion of our state\u2019s wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her presentation is titled \u201cWriting Eden: Looking for Home in the Natural World.\u201d Wall will be reading poems from her previously published book, \u201cFreshly Rooted,\u201d as well as works from a new collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the poems in \u201cFreshly Rooted\u201d explore Wall\u2019s experience both as a new wife and a new Alaskan, and were written after she and her husband decided, almost on a lark, to come to Juneau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They moved here five days after they got married; they planned to stay for a year or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then they fell in love with the place, said Wall, and ended up settling in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wall believes many of us are searching for the archetype of Eden, for an unspoiled frontier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople will sell everything, will buy a boat and go, looking for that perfect cove where there will be no one but orcas, where they can be alone and content,\u201d Wall said. \u201cThat can be very hard to do, to find that \u2014 but it\u2019s amazing how many people have that dream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in inner-city Portland. It\u2019s almost easier to write about nature in tiny restricted places. Here, oh my God, where do you start? It\u2019s so large!<\/p>Emily Wall<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wall\u2019s poems, which often focus on our place in the natural world, recast our perceptions of daily life in Juneau by enticing us with a new take on what many of us see every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her poem \u201cComposition Ravens,\u201d Wall writes, \u201cThree black knives\/cleave morning air.\/Snow has softened the sound\/but even driving\/beside them, we hear the slicing of wings.\/One has a bright orange\/peel, the other two stroke,\/young swimmers, toward\/the concrete wall, kick\/off at exactly\/the right moment,\/toward the highway,\/guardrail left\/quivering and greasy\/in their wake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tina Brown, president of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and coordinator of Wildlife Wednesdays, said she is looking forward to Wall\u2019s reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have always admired her work,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s so good that we want to share it with our community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Wall, Brown was initially drawn to Juneau because of the town\u2019s proximity to the Alaska wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy husband and I would come to Denali to backpack every summer,\u201d said Brown, who moved here from Georgia about five years ago. \u201cOne time we came to Juneau for a night, on our way to Denali \u2014 it was raining sideways and was 53 degrees, and I said, \u2018This is great!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown believes the character of Juneau\u2019s people enhances its appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no pretense here,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t tell a person\u2019s occupation or level of education by his or her way of dress, for example \u2014 all you have to do here is be yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developing a sense of self in relation to a natural landscape is a theme Wall has thought about while editing her work for her new book, \u201cLiveaboard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2019Liveaboard\u2019 can be used as a verb and a noun,\u201d said Wall, who lived on a boat with her husband for four years. \u201cIt can also be a metaphor for how we live in the natural world, for communities, for issues of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As liveaboards, Wall and her husband would cruise for 2,000 miles up and down the coast, using a dock in Vancouver as their home base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience taught her that nature\u2019s untamed wildness, its fierce lack of predictability, can actually foster community; sometimes the farther into the wilderness we venture, the more we need other people to help us survive it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to dock a boat on a river without help,\u201d said Wall. \u201cWhen we saw people come into the harbor, there was an immediate connection. You count on people to catch lines, to give accurate information on the weather, on what\u2019s going on out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need to help, and the desire for support, creates an intimacy that isn\u2019t so common in the Lower 48, says Wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou seldom need your neighbors in suburban America, when you\u2019re just bringing in a bag of groceries,\u201d she said. \u201cCommunity is the way we live together, and don\u2019t live together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared in the Juneau Empire. by Amy Condra Alaska attracts adventurers, people who come for the tall mountains and the deep rivers, who envision themselves discovering something new even as they lose themselves in an ancient wilderness. Among these dreamers from down south are the artists who want to capture the less… Continue reading \u2018Writing Eden:\u2019 Featuring poet Emily Wall<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alaska","category-arts","category-juneau","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amycondra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}