Student Spotlight: Emma Grover
Meet Emma Grover, formally of Carmel, and now of Stanford, California. Emma's poem "Late November at the New Melones Reservoir" was awarded the 2016-17 Shasta Bioregion Prize, honoring a poem from a Northern Californian watershed. Emma's poem was published in our 2016-2018 anthology, River of Words: The Natural World as Viewed by Young People.
Q: What is your current age and where are you studying?
A: I’m a twenty-year-old sophomore at Stanford and I am studying Classics, so Latin and Greek.
Q: For how long have you known about River of Words?
A: My first submission, I believe I was in fourth grade. My elementary school works with a program that encouraged - or assigned, I can’t remember - students to write poems that were then submitted with the school, but after that I started submitting on my own.
Q: How did you begin creating?
A: It must’ve been a sign, because it’s really involvement in River of Words that got me started writing poetry. I had to write a poem and I found that I enjoyed it. The first time, I remember, I tried to write a couple of quite structured poems—I think I tried Haiku. Then I wrote this other thing – I didn’t even think of it as a poem at the time, I didn’t know it could be what a poem was like, but I just wrote it. And my mother said, “Well, that’s a poem, so you can send that in!” And, lo and behold.
So, really it’s thanks to River of Words’ outreach and involvement with schools that really got me started writing poetry. I’d never thought of myself as someone who enjoys writing—look at me now, writing papers is basically what I do with all my time. So, how things have changed.
Q: What do you enjoy about the act of creating?
A: That’s an interesting question. It’s funny because often when I look back at my work, I can’t remember what I was thinking when I wrote it. I can’t think oh yes, this is why I put these words in that order. Sometimes I can, but sometimes it seems like it must’ve just come to me, like I’m writing something that’s —not from outside myself, but…from a part of myself that isn’t the self that I normally think of.
I remember reading, in a course I took this fall on poetics, I think it was something said by Octavio Paz, something about how poets don’t write poetry, they write it down. The poem is something, it exists, and you’re writing it down. I think that might especially be true with the kind of nature poetry that I’ve focused on, and that I’ve submitted to River of Words. I’m trying to find the appropriate description for something in the natural world. I like that moment when you’ve been trying to think of how to say something and then it comes at you from a different angle than how you’ve expected, the realization of how to phrase it. And you look back at it and think wow, that was inspiration!
Q: Tell me about “Late November at the New Melones Reservoir.” What inspired you? What were you thinking about when you created it? I know you just said you don’t always remember exactly what you thought about when you create poems, but what may have been in your consciousness or have inspired it?
A: This one I remember fairly well, at least the core of it, because it’s fairly specific. I wrote this poem in December of 2015—my goodness that’s a long time ago. I had spent Thanksgiving at my godparents’ house up in Calaveras Country. This was at the height of the drought, and the big question on people’s minds kind of was, “is the El Nino going to relieve the drought?” Is it going to get better in this coming year, or is it going continue, is it going to get worse?
As we were driving past the New Melones Reservoir, I think we had driven somewhere for a hike or something, and driving past reservoirs that time of year was terrifying—it was so much lower than it should be, and in the winter. I was remembering that moment when I was writing the poem. We’d gone for a hike and there was just so much exposed that wasn’t usually, and it was just bad in itself; it was interesting and it was beautiful, but it was scary.
So that was definitely a lot of what was going in my head at the time of writing that poem. I wouldn’t say that it’s a poem about the drought, in the sense that I don’t know that it’s really “about” any one particular thing, but it’s certainly motivated by that. It’s kind of the movement from this strangeness in the landscape around me to this sort of dream vision, almost, of what the end of the drought would be like. Today it feels so much less urgent, because although we’re not totally out of the woods in terms of water supply, these sorts of problems are going to grow all the more intense in the future, we can anticipate that, there’s no longer that tension of okay, this has been getting worse and worse every year, when is it going to start to let up? So a lot of the urgency of the poem has been lost.
Q: What does being a watershed explorer mean to you? (watershed explorer: someone exploring their watershed / the environment where they live)
A: The neighborhood where I grew up is right by the Carmel River, and that—up until the past two years— that river has been the center point of all of the poems I have submitted to River of Words. The most recent one, “Late November at New Melones Reservoir” is actually the only River of Words poem that has been about a subject outside of that watershed itself.
I’ve grown up with it, it was where I played as young person—in the river, in the cycles of the river, because the Carmel River isn’t a river all year round. It has water in it in the winter but in the summer it’s a dry bed. In the intervening stages it’s got pools… so, I always grew up with an awareness of that. It was very much tied to my childhood; my experience of observing nature, feeling a part of nature was always deeply tied to my experience at the river. And also observing the ways in which humanity encroaches on, and changes, the watershed, because the Carmel River is pumped for water for human use, which affects its seasonal flow patterns. When you’re interacting with a watershed that is so influenced by and constantly in contact with people’s habitation, whether that’s people living in the neighborhood nearby, the influence of people pumping the river for water for domestic or agricultural purposes, or observing the physical influence of the homeless folks who tended to live near the banks of the river, at least near where I grew up, there is the opportunity not just to observe nature but also to see humankind from an outside perspective, through our influence on the watershed.
So I think that part of being a watershed explorer for me has been not losing the sense of human influence—observing not just the workings of nature sans humanity, but the interconnectedness and the delicate balance of the watershed itself in its natural, or pre-human state, and human influence on it. I think the Carmel River in particular is an example of this balance, in part because its seasonal flow patterns are shaped by a balance between pumping for human use and allowing the river to flow freely for part of the year, in part because of conservation efforts surrounding the steelhead trout that live in the river—there’s a balance there. I grew up myself on filled wetland, it was a flood plain – it was kind of a ridiculous place to build a residential neighborhood, but that was long before I was born. So, I think my interaction with the Carmel River watershed has been shaped by an awareness of that balance, allowing the river to exist and to be as healthy as it can and at the same time acknowledging that human influence and human development in this area isn’t something that can be reversed everywhere.
I don’t want to make this sound like I am not in favor of setting aside parks and nature reserves where human development does not occur. However, I also think that it’s critically important as Watershed Explorers that we recognize that in most watersheds, it’s not possible to keep them free of development efforts, and can’t be desirable everywhere. That so much of the work of people living near watersheds, not just professional ecologists or conservationists, but really everyone living near watersheds—which is really everybody— is in negotiating a balance, keeping human influence from being overly destructive, keeping it as benign as possible.
Q: What is your advice to other young people who want to get involved or learn more about their watershed/environment?
A: My first instinct is to say I’m not the right person to ask about this. I don’t study environmental studies or ecology.
I think that the learning process has to be threefold. The first thing you have to do is actually get out there and look; take a look at the river, or ocean, or lake, or pond, or drainage tunnel, or whatever manifestation of the watershed is in your area. Take a look at it, get a sense of its rhythms. What does it look like in the summer, in the fall, the winter, and the spring? What animals and plants are there are at different times of the year? And that takes time, to get a sense of the cycle, and the rhythm of it. The way that it changes, and the way that change can be abrupt.
Another thing to do is read about it. That could be general principles of environmental science, field guides, it could be local history books, if such a thing exists in your area…The third thing is to talk to people about it. So much of what I learned about my own watershed I heard from my parents, I heard from people in my neighborhood. I lived in a floodplain growing up. There’d been fairly extensive flooding, and I heard the stories about those floods from my parents and neighbors growing up; I did not and could not have learned it out of a book. I think that there’s a sense that, I know I’m guilty of this, I want to think that we can learn everything out of a book…and by going out and walking out by myself. I’m an awkward person, I can be shy with people I don’t know—but, start with your parents, your relatives, your friends, and when they say something about the watershed, about your area, listen because that is just as good a source of local knowledge as a book, and in a lot of ways better.
So, three things—general principles, your own personal observation, and local knowledge and local history, and that last can come sometimes from books – but sometimes you can only get that from talking to people.
Q: What is some advice you'd give another young person who wants to write/create art?
A: I can’t say much about visual art, but for writing: a lot of people say this but: write a lot. A lot of it’s going to be really bad…a lot of times you’re going to get an idea in your head and you’ll think this could be a great poem! And then you’ll write it down, and you’ll try to edit it, and you’ll try to refine it and it’s just not coming together and it’s just not working. And that is going to happen to you a lot, and it needs to. If you want to write poetry that you’re happy with, you’re going to have to also write a lot of poetry that you’re unhappy with.
And it’s not necessarily in the sense that over time you’ll get better, and then you’ll write less poetry that you’re unhappy with. You’re always going to be writing a lot of poetry that you’re unhappy with, at least in my experience. If you know a way not to do that, then I would love to hear it.
That’s piece of advice number one, and the second is: don’t be afraid to try things out, even when it’s in imitation; if you read something from an author you like, try writing something in their style. Maybe you don’t like the result that much, it won’t necessarily be something you’re incredibly happy with, but this sort of mimicry for the sake of learning is really, really useful because when you try to write something in the style of one of your favorite poets, it helps you recognize what it is about their poetry that captivates you, and helps you learn to adapt some of those elements into your own work.
Q: How did you find out about River of Words?
A: It was my involvement with River of Words that really got me started writing poetry, and it was also my involvement with River of Words that provided me with recognition and affirmation that people wanted to hear what I had to say and how I had to say it, how I was saying it. So, I think it’s valuable in that sense because I think a lot of people say write for yourself, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks, and if you are really proud of something you write, and you love it, that is great—and of you don’t need outside affirmation for that piece, because you know it’s great, then that is wonderful. But it’s also true that a lot of the time it’s nice to hear that someone thinks what you’re doing is appealing to them, that you can write for other people; that you can communicate. Because I think a lot of art is communication, not just purely creating something for the sake of it existing, but communicating something through that, and when you’re trying to communicate it’s very important to feel heard—and that’s what River of Words has done for me during my involvement with the program.
I’ve also been so inspired by other River of Words poets; some of the most exciting, mind-blowing, heart-racing poetry I’ve ever heard has been from other River of Words poets, and bringing everyone together, reading the anthology and also hearing people read at the awards ceremony is inspiring—it’s challenging. It says here’s what other people are doing. And it’s wonderful to be able to look around at what your peers are doing and draw inspiration from that.
What I was saying earlier about taking inspiration from other poets isn’t only true with established poets, or professional poets, poets belonging to the canon –however you’re defining the canon and if such a concept is applicable. You can absolutely draw that kind of inspiration from your peers, and sometimes that’s the best place from which to take it. So, yes, River of Words prompted me to write poetry for the first time, and then it told me that what I was communicating in that was worthwhile, and then it showed me what is possible to do with poetry. Through seeing what my peers were doing, I got excited about the possibilities.