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Poetry at the Arboretum highlights local poets and native plant life

The New Hanover County Arboretum.
Eric W. Peterson
/
WHQR
The New Hanover County Arboretum.

The installation, which opens Friday evening, features the work of eight poets based on native plants from the Cape Fear Region. The project is a partnership between UNCW and the New Hanover County Arboretum and Cooperative Extention.

The project is the brainchild of Anna Lena Phillips Bell, an associate professor at UNCW and the editor of Ecotone, an esteemed place-based literary magazine based at the University.

Phillips Bell, a fan of wild plants and New Hanover County’s Arboretum, wrote a grant from UNCW’s Applied Learning Office to do a public poetry project. The idea: pair eight talented MFA poets from her spring workshop with local native plants, based on suggestions from the Cooperative Exention.

“And I'm just really lucky that my students were up for this wild idea. They were totally game and really into it,” Phillips said. “We are collaborating with the New Hanover County Arboretum and the North Carolina extension office to do a public poetry installation there.”

Master Gardeners gave the poets a tour and delivered a talk on native plants; the poets followed up with more research on their chosen plants.

Taking species like the dwarf palmetto, Yaupon holly, native blueberries, and Black Eyed Susans as inspiration, the MFA students in Phillips Bell’s workshop took a range of approaches.

“I left it pretty open for them…And so they could choose to start by focusing really closely on the plant's sensory information, like what it looks like, what it feels like to touch it. Or they could start with its cultural history, the way that humans have interacted with it. And people took all different approaches. There's sort of family stories, and there are really deep descriptions of the plants and what they're like and how it is to be with them, there's one that's in the voice of the plant itself,” Phillips Bell said.

The poems will be displayed next to their corresponding plants at the Arboretum.

For Phillips Bell, part of the importance was drawing attention to the importance of the thousands of native plant species, especially the 400-some types in North Carolina that are endangered, threatened, or a species of special concern.

“There's so much development happening, those plant communities are threatened all over our state. And so to stop and really spend time with a single plant and think with it and be with it and see what it can show us, I think is really important, because the way we keep things in this world is by paying attention to them,” Phillips Bell said.

But it was also important for her to celebrate the Arboretum and Cooperative Extension, as well.

“Well, it's gorgeous — it's such a pleasant place to hang out. And folks know it's open to the public almost all the time, so you can go be among the plants anytime. I wanted, selfishly, to spend time there, and I wanted my students to know about it, and I wanted to bring poetry into that space,” Phillips Bell said. “The arboretum staff have been incredible. Our North Carolina Extension Office is such an amazing resource, and they supported this project the whole way through and really made it possible. So I'm really thankful to them.”

The free installation will be open to the public all summer, but Phillips Bell hopes people will make it to the opening reception — for a few reasons.

“Well, three of my favorite things, poems, plants and also cupcakes,” she said.

In addition to all that, and live poetry readings, guests can try their hands at writing their own poems.

The opening reception for this new installation will take place from 5-7 p.m. on Friday, May 2. The event is free; you can find registration information here.

Ben Schachtman is a journalist and editor with a focus on local government accountability. He began reporting for Port City Daily in the Wilmington area in 2016 and took over as managing editor there in 2018. He’s a graduate of Rutgers College and later received his MA from NYU and his PhD from SUNY-Stony Brook, both in English Literature. He loves spending time with his wife and playing rock'n'roll very loudly. You can reach him at BSchachtman@whqr.org and find him on Twitter @Ben_Schachtman.