On Wednesday, Sept 24. laughter and tears spilled out of Gary Ransdell Hall, urged on by the poetic words of featured speaker Nikky Finney.
Finney, invited by WKU’s Gender and Women’s Studies program, is a South Carolina poet, according to her website. Her work focuses on highlighting Black culture, politics and history in the South.
According to Finney’s website, her book “Head Off and Split” won the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry. She released her latest poetry collection, “Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts,” in 2020.
Currently, according to Finney’s website, she serves as the John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Literature at the University of South Carolina.
Additionally, according to Finney’s website, for 20 years, she was the Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is also one of the founding members of the Affriclachian Poets writing collective that began in Lexington.
Dr. Marla Zubel, associate professor in the English department, said that she helped bring Finney back to WKU this fall as a part of the Robert and Catherine Ward Visiting Professor series.
“Nikky Finney loves Kentucky,” Zubel said. “Hearing her talk about the process of finding a home in Kentucky, and the particular intellectual and literary life of Kentucky and talk about her experience with it has been just really inspiring for me.”
Finney read from several of her poetry collections at the event. Poems ranged from being inspired by words said by a South Carolina senator to memories of her with one of her mentors, Gurney Norman.
Sophomore Emma Childress from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, attended the event. She said she had been previously unfamiliar with Finney’s work. However, after looking at some of her poetry online, she said she decided to come to the event.
“I think hearing her talk about difficult topics, her problem over hate, and how to make something really uncomfortable into something beautiful is really powerful,” Childress said.
After the reading, Childress said she had even purchased one of Finney’s books being sold in the lobby.
Throughout the reading, many audience members began to snap and clap while Finney was reading. Some would even speak words of encouragement and understanding at specific lines. Among the applause was Dr. Lacretia Dye from the Department of Counseling and Student Affairs.
Dye, who knew Finney as a Black woman and scholar in academia, said that Finney’s words touched her.
“The way she shared opened up an experience of my own, of how my grandmother [was] not able to write as a Black woman,” Dye said. “That’s the reason why I always write, because I didn’t know that she was a writer until her funeral.”
During the event, Finney opened the floor to the audience to ask questions. Evangeline Osabutey, a first-year Master’s student in the English department, participated in the Q&A.
She said that Finney gave the perfect answers to her questions about talent versus vulnerability in writing and merging advocacy with writing.
Finney replied to Osabutey’s questions by saying she can choose to let people into her own world and that advocacy and writing can be done at the same time.
However, Osabutey said that those words aren’t the only words that left an impact on her.
“They teach girls to be modest all the time, instead of being humble,” Osabutey said. “If there is anything that I would not forget, it is to remember that I do not have to be modest.”
Though Finney has left Bowling Green, Zubel said that her time with Finney has left her feeling a sense of responsibility as a human to let people in at the risk of being raw, vulnerable and uncomfortable.
“I think it’s so important that we create spaces where we see each other,” Zubel said. “The way that she talks about that makes me want to just step up to that task.”