Congratulations!

An interview with the celebrated poet and nature essayist.

University of Mississippi professor of English and creative writing Aimee Nezhukumatathil was honored with the university’s Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award today (May 12). The DRCAA is the university’s highest honor for faculty success and outstanding accomplishment in research, scholarship, and creative achievement.?

This 15th annual award marks the first DRCAA for Humanities, the first awarded to a woman of color, and the first with emphasis upon the creative achievement distinction.

“Nezhukumatathil’s achievements are exceptional by any standard, but they also provide the university with an opportunity to recognize a faculty member, one who is a woman of color, for creativity, rather than research, as has been the case in every other instance of this award,” said Caroline Wigginton, Chair and Associate Professor of English.

“Yet while Professor Nezhukumatathil’s most notable arena of achievement is creative, she could not write such moving and powerful poetry and essays without engaging in research."??

Her poetry and essays are rife with their fruits, acquired from such activities as delving into secondary literature and meeting with naturalists and biologists in the field. Her creative achievement is thus additionally exceptional: it celebrates ecological knowledge while clawing against expectations and barriers. It makes room for Asian Americans in all their abundance in poetry, in nature writing, in environmental research of all kinds, and in US public arts and letters, she said.?

As one of the youngest poets in the nation to achieve the rank of full professor of English, Nezhukumatathil and her husband Dustin Parsons were tenured at a small college in New York for 14 years. She was appointed to the Grisham Writer-in-Residence position in 2016. They embraced the community, and both joined the UM faculty full-time in 2017.?They call Oxford home and are raising two sons.??This is where her gratitude begins.

“To my husband Dustin—it takes a special and patient partner in every sense of the word to live and make a family with a poet. All the school lunches, the driving around for sports, airport pickups—all while teaching full time, coaching our son’s baseball team, and being a writer himself! He is the anchor of our family. My sons Pascal and Jasper—they are spectacular humans, the greatest wonders—those two are the best poems I will ever write.”?

For Nezhukumatathil, the community of scholars and writers here in Oxford is second to none—she deeply appreciates working in a community that recognizes the cultural importance of writers.

“There are too many names but my indefatigable Chair, Dr. Caroline Wigginton, is a powerful advocate for the literary arts and her department, all while being such an outstanding and active scholar herself,” she said.?“My previous chair, Dr. Ivo Kamps was a big supporter of my work and teaching, and the whole department worked so hard to bring me to this campus in the first place.”?

Her years at UM have been filled with accolades since publishing books of her poetry, having her work included in numerous anthologies, and most recently publishing a book of essays.

In presenting her award, Dr. Josh Gladden, vice chancellor for research, and associate professor of physics and astronomy said, "The Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award is the highest honor at the university which recognizes excellence and impact in scholarship. The work of the committee is always difficult with many nominees deserving recognition."

“We are so thrilled this year to be able to recognize Aimee Nezhukumatathil for her truly remarkable accomplishments that have impacted so many,” said Gladden.

In 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship, the 1st full-time faculty at the university to receive the award, based upon?exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.?On average about 3,000 scholars from fields such as chemistry to mathematics apply each year, and Nezhukumatathil was among the 175 who were awarded a fellowship, according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation .?

She explains, “The research I do for my essays and poems all comes down to having a curious mind and having lots of questions.

So much of my earlier poetry is explaining my entrance into subject matter that is “worthy” of being published. It’s not that long ago when I was so very starved to find any experience or any writers that looked remotely like me in the “best of” anthologies or journals. It was as if we didn’t exist, which is of course not true, but now (thankfully) I feel like there is an exciting embrace of writing from all backgrounds and cultures, so my focus on “explaining” doesn’t feel as urgent to me as it once did, when I was struggling to just say, “Hello! I exist!”??

But yes, to get back to that sense of urgency, I feel like what is urgent for me now is to write and record a slowing down or a tenderness towards the outdoors—in all its complications. Kind of like my way of following environmentalist Rachel Carson’s belief that the more attention we pay to the natural world around us, the less appetite we have for destruction, she said.??

In 2020, her collection of essays – World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments – was published. The result was a resounding splash the size of a humpback whale breaching to communicate as her book was on 纽约时报 bestseller list for seven weeks; selected Book of the Year for 2020 by NPR , Barnes & Noble, Inc. , The New York Public Library and Esquire magazine .

“World of Wonders is a captivating book, immensely powerful in the quiet way with which it celebrates the natural world and what it is to love and to belong. The beautiful writing is complimented by lovely illustrations in what is a celebration also of the art of book design. I join the booksellers of Barnes & Noble in recommending unreservedly this very special book,” said CEO James Daunt.

In 2021, she was appointed as the 1st and only poetry editor for Sierra: The Magazine of the Sierra Club distributed to over 1 million print subscribers.?

This nationally robust recognition of World of Wonders highlights its appeal to many audiences. Readers respond to her essays in profound and powerful ways, added Wigginton.?

“And I'd be remiss to not mention the good folks at Square Books who have been essential workers, especially through the pandemic, in bringing my books to readers all over the country,” said Nezhukumatathil.???

"The simple truth is no one gets to this point in a twenty-plus-year career without the support of the literary community behind you," she added. "While writing itself is a solitary act, what comes before and after you sit down to write is a bevy of other writers, some living, some no longer with us. To learn that so many writers and students I admire advocated for me is one I don't take lightly.”??

Of the 75 accolades received since publishing her book of essays, Indiana and Nevada chose World of Wonders as their "all-state" reading book in 2022, where the states' humanities program planned events all year long across those states to encourage reading and nature observations for the state.

The University of Mississippi selected it for their Common Reading Experience for their first-year writing program and over 50 other schools this past year have since selected it for a common read selection for their campus or adopted it as a text in their classes. Nationwide, 塔吉特百货 retail stores picked up her book for sale in their retail stores, almost unheard of for a literary nature publication.?

The book was 1 of 6 US finalists for the Kirkus Prize in nonfiction - one of the biggest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of 3 categories: fiction, nonfiction and?young readers' literature.???

If one word could be selected to describe Aimee Nezhukumatathil, it would be awe. Reflected in the review of her work by Publishers Weekly “The collection’s mix of free and formal poems strikes different moods, but throughout Nezhukumatathil’s voice is consistent in its awe."

The poet herself also recognizes the range of emotions, saying, “I think sometimes people can forget how closely tied to the environment we are. One of the many, many sadnesses I see in some governmental leaders is the constant, almost glee-like joy to declare how much they don’t believe in science and facts as if that should be somehow tied to a patriotism of sorts."???

“But science always wins, and I try to have faith that people will also be kind, that we will have leaders who will encourage kindness, not stoke fear and ignorance."

"I also hope that we broaden the conversation about who gets to enjoy the outdoors and who doesn’t, and who gets to tell stories about the outdoors and who doesn’t. As Margaret Atwood recently said, ‘The future is not written yet.’ And I still have hope.”?

Wigginton said, “We are profoundly lucky to have her as a faculty member. By honoring what she does for our institution, for our students, and our world, we collectively signal to her that we concur with the honors and acclaim bestowed on her by many, many others and that we too value and respect her contributions as one of our very own community members."??

Former UM student and award-winning author Joshua Nguyen, Ph.D. shared that his former professor significantly impacted his views.

“Her work, in particular her essays, advocates the joy of conservation, about how we are all connected with the Earth, and provides a map of her relationship with the world around her, which in turn, provides a joyous template for the reader to find a personal connection with the nature around them."?

“Her exploration of Mississippi’s natural beauty has given me a way to tether myself to Mississippi; she is part of a lineage of folks who seek, to both, reckon with the history of the South, while also creating a path for a new, inclusive South.”??

Living in the South is a pleasure for Nezhukumatathil and her family. "My husband Dustin Parsons--who just happens to be one of my favorite writers on the planet-- also teaches in the English department and we're glad for a humane department that recognizes the worth and value of making sure our family thrives here in Oxford. Many academic places make it hard to have a family and/or other interests outside the department, but not this one."

"Our sons attend the middle school and high school and most definitely take advantage of being outdoors most of the year—one of my favorite things about Oxford," she explains. "We're in that stage where at any given week when we aren't teaching or traveling, we are chauffeuring kids to cross country, tennis, or baseball (Dustin also coaches our son's teams for the past 6 years) depending on the season. Since the pandemic, I've taken up more tennis and roller-skating, the latter with my geriatric chihuahua, Haiku."

When pondering whether being a successful author impacted her perspective on what means the most to her, she offered, "My close pals would be the ones to more accurately answer, but I bet they'd say that while I have a wider audience and interest for my writing now, I still hold my family and loved ones so close and never take my time with them for granted.

"I love the exhilaration of seeing a classroom of students feel more confident and changed by seeing their writing become more crystalline and moving."

"Of all the places I travel to, I still love being in my garden and my parents' beautiful garden in Florida the best. I love being in libraries and curled up at home with a good book and my tiny dog at my feet. I still love looking for animals in the sky and in the ocean. In all the important ways, I'm still the same."?

Written by Debbie N.

Also see News Article: Ole Miss News, 05.12.23 | "Faculty Members Honored With Top Research, Teaching Awards" | Writers: Edwin Smith , Debbie N.