Author Nikky Finney Talks Poetry During A Visit To Campus

Nikky Finney talked to students about the inspiration behind her poetry.

By Alex Carolan, The Writer's Bloc

Photo courtesy of  Rachel Eliza Griffiths

“Pleas Help; Pleas.”

“Regulations require an e be at the end of any Pleas e before any national response can be taken.”

These lines appear in the University of Maryland’s First Year Book, Head Off & Split by Nikky Finney, in the poem “Left.”

Finney, author of four books poetry and winner of the 2011 National Book Award for poetry, visited campus Thursday and Friday to meet with students and faculty.

“Left” tells a harrowing tale about the forgotten victims of Hurricane Katrina. Finney said she saw the word “please” spelled without an e on one victim’s sign during the media coverage of the hurricane.

She decided to use this powerful image throughout her poem, which at one point compares the victims in poor areas of New Orleans with the victims of wildfires in rich California counties. It emphasizes the problems of class and race in this country.

“We always want the First Year Book to challenge students’ ideas,” said Lisa Kiely, the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies, “to then help them have conversations.”

“We really want students to look at history and understand that two people can look at it the same way and have very different perspectives,” Kiely said.

Johnna Schmidt, the director of the Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House, said she hoped students would take away the concept of fearlessness in reading Finney’s book.

“[She gives students] an ability to speak their own truth and wake up to the power and detonation of images from their own lives,” she said. “I hope that she inspires us all to get more intense with our own lives and written content.”

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