Is it possible to be star-struck after you’ve already met the person? Yes. Yes, it is. I met Ada Limón at a faculty reading during my first semester in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, where Ada has taught since 2014 even as the 24th US Poet Laureate, a position she has held since 2022. Embarrassed that I didn’t know her work, I bought a copy of Bright Dead Things (2015, Milkweed Editions) with the intention of expanding my knowledge of contemporary poetry. Even before I’d entered the auditorium to hear Ada read, I was stopped in my tracks—I’d opened the book to “The Saving Tree” and found these words:
… A view
of some tree breathing and the mind’s wheels
ease up on the pavement’s tug. That tree,
that one willowy thing over there,
can save a life, you know? It saves
by not trying, a leaf like some note
slipped under the locked blue door
(bathtub full, despair’s drunk),
a small live letter that says only, Stay.
Something turned inside my chest. Rarely we get what we ask for so quickly, if at all. M I can only explain not turning into some silly, screaming super fan due to Ada’s remarkable warmth and approachability. Her ability to see you and ask pointed questions about your life and then actually remember what you say is disarming. In the years since I’ve graduated, Ada’s achievements and accolades have only piled up, or soared, or amassed in some other way she’d surely describe in some magnificent way connected to a plant, or an animal, or some natural yet otherworldly phenomenon.
It’s clear through her work—including The Carrying (2021, Milkweed Editions), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award—that Ada is connected to something higher, bigger, more ethereal in all that she notices, discovers, and shares. Yet it is exactly those same attributes that plant her so firmly in this physical plane, here on Earth. It’s no surprise, then, that this kind of groundedness is at the heart of her latest book, a project that uplifts individual voices while creating authentic and profound unity.
In You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (2024, Milkweed Editions), Ada brings together fifty original poems written exclusively for this book by other living poets. The collection goes hand-in-hand with poetry events she’s helped organize with the National Park Service, celebrations that will continue through 2024 at seven different locations across the country with plentiful opportunities for anyone—super fans included—to participate. Through her work, written and otherwise, Ada reminds us of everyday magic and the importance of connection.
Monika Dziamka
This year, you were named one of TIME’s Women of the Year. Congratulations! How did it feel to be at that celebration?
Ada Limón
It was powerful to see. You know, the impact that women can have in all of these different realms—it felt like such a significant celebration of the power that women really wield. I went away feeling like, All right, you know. Let’s do it. Let’s do even more.
Monika Dziamka
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World is your latest literary work, a gorgeous anthology of nature poetry that you gathered and for which you wrote the introduction. How did this project come to be?
Ada Limón
I was tasked with doing a signature project by the Library of Congress and I knew I wanted to do something with poetry and nature, but I didn’t know what it would look like. I met with the Poetry Society of America and got really excited about the idea about putting poems in national parks, because starting something that continues [after my laureateship] sounded so lovely to me. As I thought more about it, I knew that I wanted the book to be all new poems. I didn’t want to make it an anthology of chosen poems. I wanted to give some of the best writers I know an opportunity to send original poems from a prompt and consider, What is my relationship to my landscape? What is my relationship to nature? They have blown me out of the water. Every single poem has been such a gift. Honestly, I couldn’t have hoped for a better collection. Not only were [the poems] just so brilliant, they were talking to each other. I could see how they were relating to each other.
Monika Dziamka
How did you choose the poets featured in this book?
Ada Limón
It was really difficult because, of course, I would love to have this book be 10,000 pages long and there are so many amazing poets writing right now. I think one of the biggest things that I tell people is that it’s such an exciting time to be alive because there are so many exceptional writers writing right now, and we have access to them. As toxic as the internet can be, it’s also a great place to share one poem at a time. I really tried to think of the poets whose work was regarding the natural world in an interesting and new way. And then I wanted to make sure that different regions were represented around the United States. I’m sure there are holes in my thinking, but I also didn’t want it to just be one poet from each state. I wanted to have representation across the diverse landscapes of the United States, and I wanted a diversity of form and a diversity of voices. But above all, all of the poets I chose are poets who I think are some of our best contemporary writers writing today.
Monika Dziamka
Seven additional poems by other poets will be featured in national parks around the country. Tell me more about this part of the project.
Ada Limón
I’m really excited about this! We’re going to seven different national parks to visit all of these great, beautiful installations that are designed like picnic tables. They’re easily accessible and will have the poems appear on top of the table, so you can sit around it and be close to it. We’ll have an event and a reading at each park, and we’ll include a prompt afterward that encourages anyone to write a response. It could be a poem, maybe it’s prose, it doesn’t matter, but it might encourage someone to have a deeper experience with nature.
Monika Dziamka
Have you been to all of these places already?
Ada Limón
I haven’t! There are a few that are new for me. Then there’s Mount Rainier National Park. My little brother was a park ranger there, and so it feels significant to go back there and have him come with me. And in Cape Cod, I was there as a Fine Arts Work Center fellow in Provincetown. I lived in Cape Cod for a year. Going back to the Cape Cod National Seashore and honoring Mary Oliver as one of the greatest nature poets of our time also feels really powerful. Her legacy as a poet and as a queer woman writer who dedicated her life to nature has impacted me a lot as a writer. I’m very much looking forward to that being the first stop on the tour.
Monika Dziamka
All but one of the poets featured in this National Parks part of the project have passed away. Are you going to be reading the poems from the legacy poets?
Ada Limón
I am, yeah. In fact, you can go online now to the Library of Congress and to the Poetry Society of America for more information and to hear a recording. We’re waiting for one audio file now, which is from Ofelia Zepeda because she’s going to read and record her own poem, of course. The event that we’re doing in Saguaro National Park is going to feature her, and I get to be in the background so we can highlight her and her tribal associates. That’s what I would love to do with all of the poets, actually—to sit back and lift them up and give them the platform.
Monika Dziamka
Coming back to the book, were there any particular phrases or any certain observations within these poems that have stayed with you or that really moved you in particular?
Ada Limón
Ah, I think in so many of them, [we see] that nature, in big and small ways, reminds us that we are not alone. That we are working as a part of a whole. That’s the thing that kept coming back to me, whether it was through watching a spider in the backyard, or having an encounter with a bald eagle, or admitting that you don’t know the trees and apologizing to the trees—there’s this idea that we are still in communion.
Monika Dziamka
As I read this book, a lot of memories came back to me from our Queens University study abroad session in Brazil. I was thinking about how interwoven nature is with Rio de Janeiro, where you see orchids sprouting from street lamps and monkeys jumping across rooftops. I hadn’t really experienced this kind of intense fusion of urban life and nature before. In these last few years, have you had any particular moments while you’ve been traveling, maybe going to new places or experiencing new forms of nature, where something has stood out to you?
Ada Limón
Something that keeps surprising me is that as I travel, and I travel quite a bit—I’m on the road probably once a week—it’s easy for me to feel untethered. The first thing I do over and over again is to look at the fauna and flora around me and I feel grounded again. Then, I become full of wonder again. Like, I know I’m in New Orleans because I look around and go, Oh, these water oaks are amazing! Recently I was in Sea Island, Georgia, and one of the things I’ll never get over this is the way that we name nature. There’s a certain kind of fern that grows on the live oaks. When there’s no water and it hasn’t rained, it lays flat and looks dead. And then when it rains, it pops up and it’s so vibrant and alive. It’s called the resurrection fern. I love that! And there’s a migratory bird called a red knot that flies almost the entirety of the world and it stops in Sea Island. And you think of all of the things that we go through, all of our lives, every small, wonderful moment, every big, torturous moment, and I think: Could I be that courageous? Could I be that strong, to make that kind of journey? Everywhere I go, nature is where I’m finding my grounding.
Monika Dziamka
You’ve talked about Kentucky and California in your poems. Do you have certain places specifically related to nature from these home states that you reach for when you’re in need of solace or comfort?
Ada Limón
Kentucky is really one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived. The green that’s happening right now because it’s early spring is just so vibrant and incredible. There’s a nature sanctuary here called Raven Run where you can hike along the beautiful creeks all the way to this huge river overlook, and that’s where I love to go because you can see the changing seasons and when the water is high, when the waterfalls are all running between the limestone and the slate. You can observe all these different kinds of landscapes. And then in California, in Sonoma, I have such a deep connection to all the beautiful little creeks and tributaries around Glen Ellen where I was raised. You know, I return to these places not only in real life, but also in my dream life. Those rivers and creeks are always a part of my dreams. I feel like I’m always returning to them and finding in the dream some new, wonderful ways of interacting with this watery world.
Monika Dziamka
Do you associate those particular places with certain times of the year?
Ada Limón
You know, I think in Kentucky most of the time when I’m out hiking, it’s going to be sort of later spring, summertime where it starts to warm up a little bit. And when I am in California, you could go hiking any time because the weather is so lovely. But yeah, I think it’s funny—I’m not a winter person at all, but I think I am very much a water person, which means I really love the rain. I like the rainy season because everything’s green and alive and it feels like every day there’s more water and the creeks fill and get louder. There’s something about it that always feels like a replenishing that I also need.
Monika Dziamka
You have a packed year ahead with everything related to You Are Here. But you have additional exciting projects and plans in the works!
Ada Limón
Yeah! Another thing that dovetails with this beautiful anthology is that I was asked by NASA to write a poem that will go to Europa, the second moon of Jupiter. In October, the spacecraft Clipper will launch around the same time we will be going to Everglades National Park. Combining these two events seemed really appropriate to me because when I was asked to write the poem, the first thing I thought about was, It’s got to come back to this planet. It has to come back to praising this Earth. That poem, “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” is also going to be turned into a beautiful children’s book by the illustrator Peter Sís, who is just an incredible Caldecott-winning, MacArthur Genius Grant-winning artist. People keep saying it’s a children’s book, but I think it’s also an art book—it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It feels like these projects really go hand in hand because when we think about stars, we can think beyond ourselves, but it’s all nature, and we’re part of the universe. I don’t think you can talk about any kind of space exploration or any kind of endeavor into other worlds without feeling very rooted in the urgency and love that we have for this planet. So the book is also coming out in October. I love all of these projects. I can’t help it. I really do believe in them. Do I get a little tired sometimes? Sure, but that’s OK. It also feels like there’s some part of me that wishes for the [Poet Laureate] role to be a little bit of a counterbalance to all of the horribleness that exists in our world. I think people need a few good things to hold onto. There’s such a need for anything that has even a glimmer of hope. I don’t know if I can really offer that in any sort of way, but I want to keep trying. I’ll rest later.
POETRY
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
Edited and Introduced By Ada Limón
Milkweed Editions
Published April 2, 2024
