“I think we all have voices that can sometimes take us on adventures we didn’t even know we could go on,” poet and novelist Naomi Shihab Nye told Upper School students in an assembly this April.

 

Nye delivered the 2018 Courtney Steel ’87 Lecture, which celebrates the late Spence student who loved literature and writing.

 

“She was lucky to go to such a loving school, and I am honored to be here in her memory,” Nye said.

 

Before speaking to the Upper School, Nye met with Grade 3 students who had read some of the speaker’s books and poems. The students asked her what inspired her to write (“everyday stuff”) and what makes her want to write (“So I can look at my life, so I can look at your life, so I can look at New York City or San Antonio or Dubai with a different kind of attention.”).

 

For the Upper School lecture, Esme L. ’19 introduced Nye, describing her as a “wandering poet,” born to a Palestinian father and American mother and who now calls San Antonio, Texas, home.

 

“I find that Ms. Nye’s work inspires hope for a more peaceful and empathetic Earth,” Esme said.

 

Nye said she was touched to learn about Steel, Clara Spence and the School’s motto. She particularly liked the founder’s philosophy that school should be an “intellectual and moral adventure.”

 

“To me, poetry has been a lifetime of adventure,” Nye commented.

 

Nye first began writing poems at the age of 6, and at age 7, she started sending her poems to magazines at the encouragement of her school’s librarian. Thinking of having a stranger read her poems, just as she read strangers’ poems in books, made her feel like her life was bigger.

 

The first poem Nye read aloud was one by a student she met during a school visit who had no confidence and insisted she could not write poetry.

 

“The honor and privilege of meeting younger writers and wishing you well in all that you can do with your voice is the greatest honor there could be,” Nye said.

 

One of her own poems Nye read, “The Art of Disappearing,” with lines like, “When they say, ‘Don’t I know you?’ Say ‘no’ / When they invite you to the party, remember what parties are like before answering” drew laughs from the audience.

 

Nye also read from the intro to her book Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners and talked about learning a Japanese word that translates to “life space” and can mean arriving early to avoid having to rush or giving oneself enough room to make a mistake. Nye said writing gives her the space to stand back and listen and contemplate what she is experiencing.

 

“Writing can also help us ask simple questions like, ‘Tell me about your life.’ Let’s find a way that we connect rather than where we separate,” she said.

 

When one student asked Nye how long it takes her to finish a poem, she replied that it can sometimes take five minutes—other times, five years. Nye writes daily and always keeps a notebook with her wherever she goes. She described writing as “the most portable, cheapest art.”

 

“You’ll never be sorry you wrote things down,” she said.

 

Nye ended with the poem, “Shoulders.”

 

“A man crosses the street in rain,

stepping gently, looking two times north and south,

because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

 

No car must splash him.

No car drive too near to his shadow.

 

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo

but he’s not marked.

Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,

HANDLE WITH CARE.

 

His ear fills up with breathing.

He hears the hum of a boy’s dream

deep inside him.

 

We’re not going to be able

to live in this world

if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing

with one another.

 

The road will only be wide.

The rain will never stop falling.”