Interview with 2022 Kowit Award Winner Julia B. Levine

Interview with 2022 Kowit Award Winner Julia B. Levine by Tania Pryputniewicz

1) Congratulations on your beautiful 2022 Kowit Award winning poem, “The Extra Angels.” Can you tell us about the poem and your process of writing it?

Thank you for the congrats and support on my poem.  It is such an honor to be chosen by Kim Addonizio, a poet I have long admired.

Writing this poem, like just about everything I write, came out of nowhere using the facts and fictions of an ordinary life.  The facts I relied upon were these: we were spending the summer on Whidbey Island and taking the ferries a lot to visit our youngest child who lives in the Seattle area. The scenery up in the Pacific Northwest, especially as seen from the ferries, is just stunning.  And there is of course the archetypal notion of crossing over which the ferry itself holds. At the time, my husband had found a lump in his groin that was either nothing or cancer.  And finally, given that my husband has spent his life as a landscape contractor and master gardener, there is always, between us, this idea of what comes from darkness and dirt into light, what goes from light into darkness and dirt, as a large container for understanding the mystery of being.  As for the fictions, well I thank the extra angels everywhere for appearing when summoned into the poem!!!

2)    We understand you are also Poet Laureate of Davis, California; how wonderful! Can you tell us about your Fellowship for which you are working with teen writers on the topic of climate change?
Yes, I am the current Poet Laureate for Davis and was awarded a 2022-2023 American Academy Poet Laureate Fellowship for my pilot program regarding creating resiliency in young teens around climate change. Initially, the students were asked to talk about their feelings regarding climate change, and I was saddened, but not surprised, to hear their anger, despair, helplessness, and dread. We then read some ecopoems and wrote poetry from prompts for part of the time; the other part involved bringing in local business professionals and scientists to share their successful projects in mitigating global warming.  Finally the kids were asked to record one of their own poems on a soundfile. This was then loaded onto an app that allowed us to walk around a bike path in Davis listening to each poem read aloud by the student author!
3)    What has been the most challenging and the most rewarding about your role as Poet Laureate? What have you learned about the community of poets in Davis?

I have loved being poet laureate.  My platform was poetry of the Anthropocene.  I wanted to bring poetry to local groups working on climate change and mitigation strategies. This is an amazing town when it comes to innovation around reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Before my tenure ends, I am hoping to create a poetry ride on the Davis Bike Path: this is a multiple mile path that goes through the entire city.  I have chosen poems and locations and just need time to create a platform for listening to these poems on each stop around the bike path.

The main challenges in this role have generally been how to organize everything and carry it out myself. People often ask about my events: so how are they going to do this? And my response is well, there is no they.  There is only me.

Because I have focused entirely on climate change, my connections have been almost entirely with the organizations that focus on this topic.  I miss having a connection to the poetry community in Davis, because I know it is a large and extremely active one.  Funny, but that will likely happen when I am no longer the poet laureate!!  Still, my goal was to bring poetry to places it often does not appear.

4)    Can you tell us about your own latest poetry book project?

My latest collection, Ordinary Psalms, (LSU Press, 2021), was an interrogation of religious texts in the context of an ordinary life, specifically to answer my own questions about the existence of God. I have lost most of my vision in the past ten years due to a lifelong degenerative condition, and I was interested in understanding the perceptual aspect of sight as distinct from the religious and creative ideas of vision.

It generally takes me about 6 – 7 years between collections, and so I am not certain what will happen next.  I can say that my poem, “Extra Angels”, was a strangely foreboding poem.  My first grandson, who was born last fall, was diagnosed with infant leukemia when he was not even five months old. His treatment, which is long and risky and grueling, has taken over our lives.  I am writing about this now as a way to stay present and as Galway Kinnell once said to me, “to lay my burden of feeling down one poem at a time.”  And the extra angels, well they keep arriving, often dressed as nurses…
Julia invites all San Diego residents to attend the free poetry celebration taking place on April 7th, 6:30-9pm, at SD Central Library, where he will be introducing Lee Herrick, CA Poet Laureate and feature speaker for the Kowit Poetry Awards. Link for free tickets below.