Associate professor's poetry selected for national competition

By Bridget Murray

Associate professor Ross Gay was selected for the 2015 National Book Awards Longlist for Poetry. He was selected for his book, “Catalog of Unabashed  Gratitude.”

He is one of 10 poets to be selected; the National Book Foundation will announce the finalists Oct. 14.

“I feel lucky to have the book be amongst a really wonderful bunch of poets and books,” Gay said in an email interview.

His other poetry collections include “Against Which” and “Bringing the Shovel Down,” according to a press release.

Gay said “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” published February 2015, stands out because of its  intimate nature.

“My poetry, in this book, is kind of talky and intimate — like it wants to be your friend and tell you stories and ask questions of itself in front of you,” he said in an email. “It kind of wants to hold its heart in its hands (that is a cliche, enjoy it) in front of you, and say, ‘Check this out!’”

A “zillion” things inspired “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” Gay said, ranging from the free-fruit-for-all Bloomington Community Orchard that he is involved in to an incident in his life involving bird poop.

He said the engine of these poems lies in the ways things can possibly be transformed.

“That’s all to say that the strange and undervalued and sexy and gone and unseen and dreamt ... inspire me,” Gay said in an email.

Gay has also co-authored books, including “River” with Richard Wehrenberg, Jr. and “Lace & Pyrite” with Aimee  Nezhukumatathil.

He said he writes poems because they are fun, and yet they allow him to connect to his own deeper thinking.

“It is one of the ways I recognize and articulate and interact with my sorrow,” he said. “And my joy.”

Gay said he uses metaphors in his poetry, which are “magic.”

Anyone who is kind enough to read or listen to Gay’s poetry is his intended audience, he said, and he does not take their  kindness lightly.

“I cherish it and feel lucky to have any kind of audience,” he said in an email.

He said he hopes these readers take something from his poetry.

“I hope something useful,” he said in an email. “Someone told me they left a reading of mine and smelled flowers for the first time in years. That was pretty good.”

Bridget Murray

Jul 29, 2015

A poem about Eric Garner by IU prof Ross Gay

From PBS:

A detail you may not have known about Eric Garner blossoms in poem

BY CORINNE SEGAL

July 20, 2015 at 11:09 AM EDT

Listen to Ross Gay read “A Small Needful Fact.”

One year and three days ago, Staten Island man Eric Garner told officers “I can’t breathe” 11 times while in a chokehold by Officer Daniel Pantaleo — his last words.

These words and the protests that followed Garner’s death are the backdrop for “A Small Needful Fact,” a poem by Indiana University professor and poet Ross Gay. The poem drew a wide audience online, garnering thousands of shares on Facebook and Twitter. Gay, whose book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press this year, said the poem was based on a fact about Garner that he read in an obituary.

Much of the press surrounding Garner has focused on the violence of his death, while the poem puts a needed spotlight on his life, Gay said. “What that poem, I think, is trying to do is to say, there’s this beautiful life, which is both the sorrow and the thing that needs to be loved,” he said.

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

Ross Gay is a poet, professor at Indiana University and author of the collection “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.”