Collegian T he Cameron University
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COWBOY POETRY
Monday, November 11, 2019
FEATURING
Volume 101 Issue 7
Photos by Payton Williams
JILL HAWKINS Payton Williams Managing Editor @YoureSoVanya
Poetry’s great power, to me, derives from the almost mystical way in which it transforms the deeply personal into something universal. Jill Hawkins is a poet who understands this power very well. During a conversation in the soft light of a coffee shop in Duncan, Oklahoma, Hawkins’ face lights up with excitement as she describes what she believes is a key reason she chooses to write poetry. “As a kid, I had a lot of bad dreams,” Hawkins said. “I was very emotional, and I always write from that emotional perspective, and I’m hoping that when I do that, other people won’t feel so alone, like you’re connectable with them.” At a podium in the Cameron Center for Emerging Technologies conference room on Nov. 1, Hawkins reads poetry that feels pulled straight from the minutiae of memory. She starts with a poem recalling the fraught recollections of the eighties, another about the impact the recent death of her father has had on her family, and another outlining the smaller details of tagging a calf. Hawkins’ poems feel as much about place as they do about her. A large portion of her poetry she refers to
“We actually lived on a college campus, and as “Cowboy Poetry,” poems that reflect her so, who would usually be your neighbor, we had a experience living and working on a ranch in library, and so I read all the classics.” Southwest Oklahoma, raising cattle. While Hawkins had a love for poetry all her Hawkins said her poetry is unique in the way it life, it wasn’t until she started working on her captures a sense of place. terminal degree at the Oklahoma City University “I suppose if you’re not exposed to large Red Earth MFA program that she began to explore quantities of land and trees,” Hawkins said, “and modern poetry and began to your summer experiences find her own poetic voice. weren’t swimming in the “I’ll get physically sick Hawkins said, during lakes, you’re not gonna write her MFA training, a mentor about those things, and those if I don’t write for awhile. asked her to name five of are big elements in our life That junk has got to come her favorite poets, and listed here.” out of my head and free among them, herself. Hawkins also described “Everyone just stopped, the act of writing as a sort of up some files, so it’s not and there were three new compulsion for her, rather than an option for me; I’ll write poets, and a few that were as something she necessarily if you pay me, don’t pay already in the program, and expects to do for a living. they looked at me like, ‘did “I’ll get physically sick me, doesn’t matter.” you just list yourself as one if I don’t write for awhile.” — Jill Hawkins of your five favorite poets?’ Hawkins said. “That junk has Poet And I’m like, ‘What, if you got to come out of my head don’t like yourself, how do and free up some files, so it’s you expect anyone else to?’” not an option for me, I’ll write Poetry is a type of writing deeply related to the if you pay me, don’t pay me, doesn’t matter.” feelings of the writer, and it requires a writer who Hawkins said that she has been writing since is willing to share a lot about themselves, even if it she was four or five years old, and that her love is uncomfortable. of poetry and literature largely derived from her father, who worked as an English professor at For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Leah Chaffins at lellis@cameron. the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma edu. (USAO) in Chickasha, Oklahoma.
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