Natural Wonder
In her latest book of poems, Glenis Redmond explores the essence of her experience in South Carolina’s state parks
By Beth Brown Ables
The day Glenis Redmond, the poet laureate of Greenville, South Carolina, received her cancer diagnosis, she was at Paris Mountain State Park filming a television segment. Six years later, her latest collection, The Song of Everything, published by Good Printed Things, comes into being. In it, Glenis celebrates and reclaims nature for herself, her grandson, and the world at large. Each poem is a kwansaba, a poetic form celebrating African American family and culture. The guidelines: seven lines, seven words per line, no word exceeding seven letters.
The poems sprung from necessity. Escaping the isolation and technology overload of the pandemic, Glenis and her grandson, Julian, took on the challenge of visiting each of South Carolina’s 47 state parks. There, walking the trails and splashing in lakes and streams, they discovered a landscape of connection and reconciliation, starting, poetically enough, at Paris Mountain.
A celebration of African American culture set against the backdrop of South Carolina’s state parks, A Song of Everything showcases the latest collection of work by Greenville’s poet laureate Glenis Redmond; photograph by Will Crooks.
Describe the landscape of your heart today.
Glenis Redmond: It’s complicated. Like the state parks—they’re so beautiful, but it’s complicated. I go there to relax and see the beauty, yet it’s weighted. It’s not just the pastoral, bucolic aspect. There’s history right alongside it, because the parks were segregated.
You’re the poet laureate of Greenville, South Carolina, its first ever. Why does a community need an official poet?
GR: Because our stories matter, and that’s what poetry is, it’s telling our stories. This city has so much history, and the poet laureate is the chief storyteller. My term will be up this fall, and the baton will pass to the next poet. It’s important for the role to shift from one person to another, to tell new stories from new perspectives.
Where does a poem begin in you?
GR: I’ve been using this metaphor for a long time: if my heart is a house, poems line up at my front door trying to get in. They ring the doorbell; the most urgent ones are the ones that get in there and get written. The ones that are quieter and patient need me to slow down and listen. Some are more ethereal—they just kind of sing into being. They want to dance! When they come, they say ‘Girl, you need to write this down now, because I’m not going to come again.’
Each poem in Redmond’s book is in the style of a kwansaba, or a poetic form celebrating African-American family and culture, encompassing seven lines, with seven words per line, and no word exceeding seven letters; cover image courtesy of Good Printed Things.
Tell us about the state parks project.
GR: I live with my daughter and my grandson. He was five years old; she was working remotely and often it was just him and I. We had too much screen time going on in our lives. So we got outside, first to Paris Mountain, and then I bought the first Park Pass I’ve ever had in my life. The first poem I wrote was at one of the coastal state parks. I looked up to see an egret standing behind Julian, and a poem rose up from there.
Tell us your relationship with the outdoors.
GR: Nature speaks, and it speaks to all of us. What’s been done to the African people on American soil goes deep. To segregate nature is one of the most heinous things, and that’s what I’m struggling with in these poems. It’s a long thread connected all the way back to slavery, because if you don’t see a person as human, then you don’t see someone that needs relaxation or refreshment; they only are there for service. And it takes the consciousness to keep rising, to keep fighting.
Portraits by Will Crooks
The Song of Everything by Glenis Redmond, published by Good Printed Things, is available now. Order your copy at goodprintedthings.com.