A conversation with Christine Stewart-Nuñez

Beginning July 1, 2019, South Dakota will have a new PoetLaureate. South Dakota State University professor and lifelong poet Christine Stewart-Nuñez was chosen by Governor Kristi Noem at the recommendation of the State Poetry Society. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Postcard on Parchment (2008), Keeping Them Alive (2010), Untrussed (2016) and Bluewords Greening, which received the 2018 Whirling Prize from Etchings Press. She was named as 2018 Author of the Year by the South Dakota Council of Teachers of English and her work has appeared in Arts & Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner and Shenandoah.

As Stewart-Nuñez begins her four-year term, she is already planning to compile an anthology of poems focused on South Dakota. She hopes to widen the conversation about poetry throughout the state during her tenure.

Arts Alive: Has poetry always been a part of your life?

Christine Stewart-Nuñez: My oldest poetry artifact is from the third grade, filled with artwork and poems about bugs and butterflies. Once I began writing, I never really stopped. Every time I tried to stop writing becauseI thought nobody would read it, I started again—it’s an integral part of who I am.

I never imagined that I’d be a poet laureate for a state or write books or get a PhD or teach people about writing. I just put my hat in the ring and do it. I got my first full-time teaching job by returning a phone call from a director of a school in Tarsus, Turkey. Three days later I interviewed, and three weeks after that I was living in a foreign country. That experience energized my poetry and led to my first book, Postcard on Parchment.

Does geography shape your poetry?

My poems utilize place as a lens to focus my experiences. As poets we try not to use abstractions, but to build on images. I try to look at where I’m at, and travel makes me aware of my surroundings, ready to explore new sights. It takes me a while to become grounded in a place— but I think I’m settled in South Dakota. My last two books are set here, imagining the prairie as a historical place. The poems I’m working on right now are more South Dakota. My husband studies architecture around South Dakota and so towns around the state are popping up in my poetry—in both natural and urban landscapes.

What is on your agenda for your term as Poet Laureate?

It’s my goal to edit an anthology of poetry about South Dakota written by South Dakotans. I hope to begin conversations in classrooms about poetry, since it’s my job to focus on the poetry happening here. I think that begins with having students write and read their own poems.

For a time I was the editor of Pasque Petals, the South Dakota State Poetry Society’s journal. One of the delights was publishing new poets. It’s great to shake the trees and see what poets fall out. I’ll be talking to people in communities and they’ll admit to writing their own work. That’s the way we can bring poetry out. As Poet Laureate, I’d like to generate more conversations about poetry all over the state and spotlight the original poetry of South Dakotans.

I Wonder

about perspective; we finish less what’s farther away. Here’s a petal, flower, bush, garden; there a horizon of trees, landscape framed east and west. I wonder

about distance—here Izhvesk, islands, Italy, India; there Jupiter and Mercury diminished in the heavens. I wonder about

shifts. Here’s a cubed melon, bowl of cream, mint leaf, spoon, cloth napkin; there the slant of light that alters the color of the fruit’s

flesh. I wonder how we can trust what we see. Here’s the spark and there the wind that fuels it up— a ribbon of flame. I wonder why everything dissolves

when we look away.

From “Untrussed” by Christine Stewart-Nuñez.