American Book Review

With a history that spans centuries, the role of a poet laureate has gained enormous popularity and influence in the twenty-first century. In the United States, what began as a Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1937 has proliferated into a full-fledged national program. Today, poet laureates representing states, regions, big cities, and small towns join with youth laureates to build and bring community through print, spoken word, music, and performance. This conversation with Joseph Drew Lanham is the first of a series—"The Laureates"—that will engage current and past poet laureates who are spreading the word in diverse settings, each in their distinctive ways, though always starting with their own poems and vision.

The poet laureate of Edgefield County, a small county in South Carolina, where he grew up, Lanham is recognized nationally as a writer, environmentalist, and ornithologist. A University Distinguished Alumni Professor of Wildlife Ecology and a Master Teacher in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Clemson University, he has been honored with numerous grants and awards; in 2022 he received a MacArthur "Genius Grant." He is the author of a memoir titled The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature (2016) and of Sparrow Envy (2017), a poetry collection. Forthcoming books include Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves and Range Maps: Birds, Blackness, and Loving Nature between the Two.

Lanham seeks to bring the historical past into the present as he explores connections between the natural world and social justice with a special focus on David Drake, an enslaved man living in the 1800s, known for his exceptional pottery that today is highly coveted by museums and collectors. Lanham's study reflects his belief that, as he writes, "I cannot tell stories of birds and of the cypress swamps and old rice fields I frequent in low-country [End Page 142] South Carolina without telling the story of those who moved forests, soil, and water through force and greed. There are stories in the soil that have to be plowed up" ("Forever Gone," Orion Magazine, 21 February 2018). As poet laureate, he continues to unearth those stories, often transforming them into poems and inspiring others to do the same.

(The following conversation occurred via Zoom and email in March 2023.)

renee h. shea:

In the opening of The Home Place you write: "I am a man in love with nature. I am an eco-addict . . . a wildling . . . an ornithologist, wildlife ecologist, and college professor . . . a father, husband, son, and brother. I hope to some I am a friend . . . I'm a man of color. . . ." Which one of these is Edgefield County's poet laureate?

j. drew lanham:

All of them, I hope, but it's an interesting omission that I didn't say I was a poet when in many ways I see myself as that first and foremost. Historically, Edgefield dwarfs many states in terms of what it has exacted on the US—and it's been limiting for Black folks, so I want those labels to collapse into a different kind of poet laureate.

rhs:

What do you mean by Edgefield dwarfing other places?

jdl:

As a Black man thinking about the history of the United States, I first go to my ancestors and enslavement—things like the Three-Fifths Compromise and Jim Crow. Ultimately, much of that policy came out of Edgefield County, as did ten of the state's governors. Strom Thurmond [a native of Edgefield] sort of single-handedly gave license to "separate but equal"—as many others did, but he had a unique leverage. The racist rhetoric of "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman has been repeated over and over even up to a recent occupant of the White House. Preston Brooks—an enslaver, separatist, and segregationist—caned his fellow senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, on the US Senate floor. As I think about what Edgefield is and has been, it's pretty remarkable for a Black man to be representing it as poet laureate—to have the power of words, or...