By TIERRA HAYES – Senior Copy Editor
By GRACE POLANECZKY – Online Opinions Editor
NAACP award nominee poet Camille Dungy visited Clarke Central High School to discuss her several of her published books such as “What to Eat, “What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison”.
The Clarke Central High School Media Center hosted award-winning poet and editor Camille Dungy on April 7, 2016 as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ “The Big Read,” a program that encourages reading and literacy. Currently, The Big Read in Athens focuses on the naturalist poetry of Robinson Jeffers.
“(The Big Read) is a federally-funded program from the National Endowment for the Arts that was founded because they started doing public surveys of people’s reading habits as they started noticing that arts and literacy participation was going down,” University of Georgia Professor of TESOL and World Language Education Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor said, who facilitated the event in conjunction with CCHS personnel.
The goal of The Big Read is to engage students in reading by hosting events to learn about different authors and their work. At CCHS, Dungy read her own poetry, as well as the works of Robinson Jeffers, to students.
“There’s something there, this idea that the world around us is larger than we are,” Dungy said. “It’s something that I believe and it’s something that Robinson Jeffers believes.”
After reading poetry, Dungy took questions from students. One student, junior Jai Powell, asked if she had written anything about the recent police brutality cases.
“Yes, I have. I have a black male husband, I have a father, I have a child, I have compassion and I have eyes,” Dungy said. “I don’t know how you can live in this moment and not be speaking to the terror that exists in this world.”
Many students found Dungy’s wisdom concerning nature, history and race uplifting.
“It was very inspiring seeing that an African-American woman could get to such a high level,” junior Jamar Fathe said. “Where African-Americans were looked at as never being able to be smart, she showed that you can.”
The Big Read in Athens will continue with its celebration of Robinson Jeffers until June 2016, with events including “Jeffers-Inspired Art” with David Ligare at the Georgia Museum of Art on April 29 and 30, and “Eco-Poetry in Today’s Georgia” at the Athens-Clarke County Public Library on April 12 and May 18. To learn more, visit www.coe.uga.edu/bigread.
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