When you first talk to Kwame Dawes, it's clear early on that he's been called the "busiest man in literature" for a reason.
The Ghana-born, Jamaican poet is the chancellor's professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, editor of the Prairie Schooner, artistic director for the Calabash International Literary Festival, as well as a teacher in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Pacific University in Oregon.
Dawes has written more than 20 poetry books and many other books of fiction, essays and criticisms. Oh, and don't forget the plays — he had a successful theater career before turning to poetry and teaching.
His interests include post-colonial literature and theory, Caribbean literature, African American and African literature, reggae aesthetic and playwriting, among many others. Those interests are as much a part of his personal life as they are his professional life.
"I don't know if I have 'hobbies,'" he said, although he consumes television from streaming services, listens to audio books "at an alarming rate" and listens often to the radio. "I suppose I will call these 'hobbies' because I do all of this for pleasure. Then again, I have sought to arrange most of my life to make my work pleasurable."
While some need to be in a certain mindset to write, or get the creative juices flowing with a cup of coffee, tea or a favorite song, Dawes said he doesn't have much of a writing routine. For him, writing is just his nature.
"I don't think anyone can know when I am writing creatively versus writing an email or watching Hulu," he said. "I only need a reason to write and there is no shortage of reasons. The truth is that I really write whenever, wherever and however."
And now he's adding column writing to his repertoire. In September, it was announced that Dawes would take over the "American Life in Poetry" column from Ted Kooser.
The weekly column was initiated by Kooser and is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress. It runs in the Lincoln Journal Star and several other newspapers.
Kooser, who was U.S. poet laureate between 2004-2006, has said previously that the connection between poetry and newspapers was near and dear to him.
"As poet laureate I want to show the people who read newspapers that poetry can be for them, can give them a chuckle or an insight," the rural Garland resident said.
Kooser, 81, announced he was stepping aside in his 805th column, 15 years after the first.
Dawes said it was an easy decision to assume the role Kooser presented.
"I believe in the column's goals and what it has achieved," he said. "I live with poetry as a constant, and so this is merely an extension of my conversation with poetry and with readers of poetry."
Dawes said he will continue the core principles of the column: fusing and providing poetry in places some may not expect, such as a newspaper. But he's aware of the modern changes facing print media and how that could affect the poetry in the column.
"For the column to continue to be relevant, we have to be aware of the different ways in which people consume their daily news," he said. "And so it is our plan to stay abreast of these changes in how we think of 'publishing' the column."
Dawes' most recently published work is a book of poems called "Nebraska" (2019), in which odes to the Midwestern landscape and Nebraska traits are settled into the background of the poetry.Â
A migrant of many locales and ways of life, Dawes said he associates Nebraska with the work he has done here.
Listen now and subscribe: | | | |
"I would have to say that a place becomes valuable to me when it is connected with the stages of my family's life," he said. "My children became adults in Nebraska. ... My wife, Lorna, and I have entered the next stage of our lives (in Nebraska)."
He said if he ever left the state, he would miss the light here the most.
"There is something truly healthy for me about the generosity of sunlight that this landscape offers, and I am grateful for it," he said.Â
Dawes considers himself a "conduit" for the rise of other writers and has spent a huge portion of his energy on writers of African descent.
"I have never understood the usefulness of individual and singular success when it comes to building a literary tradition," he said. "I believe that it takes an army of voices to create a credible tradition. And what we have suffered as victims of slavery, colonialism and imperialism is a silencing of those voices, and so the gathering of voices is important to me."
He also believes that "some of the most dynamic and innovative poetry" written now comes from writers who focus on providing creative voice to "large swaths of silence, of absences."Â
"Poets of African descent have found a way to turn curse into the source of great art. ... I like being a part of that march."
The African Poetry Book Fund, of which Dawes is the founding director, acts as a switchboard of sorts, connecting the development and publishing of works with workshops, contests, conferences and more. In 2020, the fund awarded the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets to Cheswayo Mphanza.
Dawes has worked with young poets such as Safia Elhillo and Danez Smith, two pioneers in American and diasporic poetry. According to Dawes, they are not the only ones creating avenues for other poets.
"There are many of them, and I get to play some role in making sure that these voices have the space and platform to speak."
Throughout 2020, those priorities did not falter or wane. Months of protests after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police implied to Dawes that 2020 was a "pivot year," though certainly not the first of its kind, or the last. Â
"I am reminded that these are not especially unique times," he said. "White supremacy is a constant and what may be changing is how we react to anyone saying that. I am just not sure. I think that if we are willing to discuss what that term means as it has been spoken of by so many thinkers over the last several hundred years, we will be able to contend positively and productively with the tragedies that we have witnessed this year."
For Dawes, poetry is a mechanism with which to propel forward, keeping history in the mix as conduct for the future is built.
"Poetry allows me to express the human and personal effects of history, of the ways of humanity, the politics, and economies of destruction and that intimacy, combined with a quest for beauty and a desire to chronicle these realities is what I remain committed to," he said.
Now, as we begin to settle into 2021, Dawes is looking forward, "richly and with hope."
His calendar has appointments well into the future, and he looks forward to working, teaching, editing and seeing the literary landscape change.
"But I believe that the poems that you will see from me in the coming year will show how deeply I have thought of these things and how much art (and) poetry can, in some small ways, bring clarity to the things happening around us," he said. "I do look at the future with full awareness of the challenges that will come with it, but that is also part of it."
“Hers was a moving articulation for the moment — timely, lucidly constructed and in moments, elegantly sublime,’’ Kwame Dawes said of Amanda Gorman.