A catalpa tree has lived for more than a century on what is now the University of Mississippi campus, its gnarled branches extending a broad canopy of shade near the student union building. The tree’s trunk is so large that a whole class of professor Ann Fisher-Wirth’s honors students could barely fit their linked arms around it.
In her poem, “Catalpa,” Fisher-Wirth imagines the ancient tree as a sapling, and her “mind enters a great quiet.”
She sees the tree through Mississippi history: the Depression, yellow fever, the burning of Oxford during the Civil War. She meditates on the lichen on the catalpa’s bark and the hollow in its trunk, and she ends the poem imploring, “turn around, and look at the tree.”
Fisher-Wirth, whose poem “Catalpa” appeared in the 2023 collection “Paradise is Jagged,” recently began her four-year term as Mississippi’s poet laureate, nominated by other writers and leaders of cultural agencies and appointed by Gov. Tate Reeves. Her outreach will invite the state’s residents to create and appreciate poetry together.
“In Mississippi, people have amazing stories,” Fisher-Wirth said in an interview. “And I would welcome to hear some of those stories.”
Fisher-Wirth directed the University of Mississippi’s environmental studies program and taught creative writing in its Master of Fine Arts program before she retired in 2022. She is a past president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and is a senior fellow of the Black Earth Institute, which concentrates on social justice and environmental issues.
Fisher-Wirth has written eight books of poetry. Her writing centers on place and humans’ connection to nature.
Her responsibilities as poet laureate include creating poetry and reading poetry at state events. She will also spearhead initiatives that engage the public with poetry.
Fisher-Wirth plans to start a podcast called “The Favorite Poem Project,” where she and fellow Mississippians will read and discuss their favorite poems. A written version of “The Favorite Poem Project” will be published as a column in the Clarion Ledger.
Fisher-Wirth also hopes to continue the Mississippi Poetry Project, started by her predecessor, Catherine Pierce. Each year, K-12 students write poems that respond to a prompt from the poet laureate. Last year’s prompt centered on students’ dreams and wishes.
Fisher-Wirth often writes on seeing and listening to the world. Her poems contemplate natural scenes — such as a lone zinnia near a pond or a stag eating flowers over a raw grave.
“We are absolutely embedded in an interrelationship with the environment,” she said. “We can’t live without this world that we find ourselves in.”
In Fisher-Wirth’s perspective, “paying attention” invites a positive relationship with the nonhuman world. She explained that awareness of the trees in our yard, the types of fish that we catch, the birds that come in the winter and the people who grow our food all shows care to nature.
“A lot of people already have a lot of environmental knowledge,” Fisher-Wirth said. “But this is just a way to kind of bring that forward.”
She is in the “very, very beginning stages” of a project of collective poetry writing. She hopes to collaborate with residents of Mississippi towns to write poetry fragments about their communities. Eventually, each town’s fragments will be woven into a single poem that represents the town.
At present, she is recovering from a second hip replacement surgery.
“Nothing can start until I’m back on my feet,” Fisher-Wirth said.
She said art, including poetry, is “the vital lifeblood of a culture.” Poetry is one way of paying attention. Fisher-Wirth, who has edited two ecopoetry collections, writes primarily about place and is eager to hear Mississippi stories.
“I think poetry is a great way to move people’s hearts and awaken their senses, and just open the world in them,” she said.
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