PUTNEY-Emma Paris is a creative force.
The 19-year-old from Putney has been named Youth Poet Laureate of Vermont. This position was established in 2024 by Sundog Poetry (sundogpoetry.org), a nonprofit that supports poets and poetry in the state, in partnership with Urban Word, a New York City organization that founded the National Youth Poet Laureate program.
Paris's honor comes with a $500 award, an invitation to a regional competition, and the opportunity to participate in virtual workshops led by renowned poets.
The rising Bennington College sophomore has seen her work appear in VTDigger, Zaum (Sonoma State University's literary magazine), The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, Northern New England Review (Franklin Pierce University's literary magazine), MORIA (Woodbury University's literary magazine), Harpur Palate (Binghamton University's literary magazine), and more.
Paris, homeschooled through high school, describes her education as community-based.
"We moved around the Brattleboro area a little bit before settling in Putney, which is such a sweet area," she says. "It's so rich in community, which is really important to us."
She observes that "a lot of my teachers have been people in the community: I feel really connected to the people in this area."
Paris started writing poetry "pretty early on as a preteen, and I had a lot of great local poets in my life really nurturing my creative process from the get-go," she says. "I have been in the same circles as Chard deNiord and Verandah Porche and Bianca Stone," who she describes as "amazing Vermont poets." Among other influences she counts poets Sharon Olds and Mary Oliver.
Paris's mother, Amber Paris, an artist who's recently created the art installation "Trail Magic" at the Retreat Farm in Brattleboro, has had a deep influence on her daughter's life and work, too.
In a May interview with Sundog for its website, Emma Paris said, "I have a really close relationship with my mother. She's been my biggest supporter since day one, as well as a fellow creative mind existing in the artistic space of multimedia meets landscape/place/geography.
"We both center on creating work that is embedded in place, whether that place is the physical landscape, or scientific research, or a bookmark in lineage."
Paris's work reflects her views of interconnectivity and even her interdisciplinary concentration at Bennington in poetry/creative writing and ecology/environmental science. Her calling is to bridge the creative and the scientific.
"As a budding ecologist, wilderness education mentor, nature lover, and advocate for all species, I'm naturally inclined to explore the outdoors both literally and literature-ly," she says. "The natural world, and all the archetypes and history that come with it, aren't only embedded in my work content-wise, but also in my form and style."
Paris says that "creating a poem is like witnessing an ecosystem come alive - you have a responsibility for everything in it as well as a promise to let it thrive without you."
Of her current work, she says, it's "very experimental and tied to my studies in ecology. But I'm also attached to creating work that feels local and centers on a point of social justice in my immediate community."
An activist at heart, Paris notes that when she was younger, she would read poetry at rallies and marches in Brattleboro.
In doing so, "what was really important to me was the engagement with the people in the town and just speaking on things that were important to everybody," she says.
She considers poetry a vehicle for community building, for expressing, and for communicating.
"I do a lot of environmental activism because it's tied to my passion with environmental science and ecology," Paris says.
"A poem is a lot like a forest," she continues. "By this I mean an ecosystem is composed of many smaller organisms who all have a purpose and a role in the environment. Everything impacts everything else. Nothing exists out of the context of the forest."
Paris is influenced by 20th-century poet William Carlos Williams who, she paraphrases, believed a poem "is made out of smaller moving parts, all of which influence and change how the others function, just as in an ecosystem."
Furthering the analogy, she adds, "biomes are crafted and altered by ecosystem engineers, such as beavers, for example. Beavers, by creating dams, alter the landscape and thus bring forth habitat niches into existence, promoting biodiversity and ecosystem health."
"We writers are a bit like engineers ourselves," Paris says. "By engaging in careful craft and detail, we also create niches and space for things/ideas/feelings that can't exist anywhere else."
Of her intentions as a poet, Paris says, "I'm really just hoping to provoke thoughts. We live in an age of constant stimulation and media, which results in a lot of misinformation and misdirection. It is vital for us, especially in times like these, to practice media literacy and critical thinking about the world.
"I create work that does not always serve meaning on a silver platter: I want to make people think. I believe the significance of a poem arises out of the challenge of understanding it. Just as a riddle is not nearly as gratifying if you're told the answer, as opposed to teasing it out yourself."
After taking a course at Bennington in feminist writing by '70s and '80s women of color, Paris says she came to see that "there are some people that view poetry as a tool for [a] movement. Then there's another point of view that views poetry as the movement itself. I think that those are both two really cool perspectives."
Bringing people together 'in the name of poetry'
Paris became Youth Poet Laureate of Vermont after being a runner-up for the honor in 2024, when Harmony Devoe of Harwood Union High School was named.
The application process, Paris explains, involves submitting "a pretty comprehensive list of all of your civic engagements [...] and any poetry publications or awards" earned, as well as a portfolio of poems.
As youth poet laureate, she expects that her focus will be "community-based."
"I've been meeting with Sundog to talk about [public] events we want to host [...] and about establishing programming to bring people together in the name of poetry - or just creativity in general," Paris says.
Some events are already in place, but she does have "a lot of agency" over what she does.
"One thing I'm going to be focusing on is creating bridges between scientific and artistic communities," Paris says.
"I think that it's really important that we stop polarizing those two disciplines: They work so much better together," she continues. "Especially in times like these, it's important to draw people together to talk about their passions and to connect with people in other fields."
Last winter, Paris participated in an internship at Green Writers Press, based in Brattleboro, whose mission also melds the literary with the environmental.
"I am so impressed with Emma - she has a bright future as a poet and a poetry editor," says Dede Cummings, owner and publisher. In fact, Cummings adds, "her brilliant debut poetry manuscript is under consideration for acquisition with our press at this time."
Paris writes whenever time allows, noting that "right now I'm focusing on my education," with hopes, she adds, of eventually earning a doctorate in ecology and a master of fine arts degree in poetry.
"I hope my work can serve as a reminder that we are not the center of the universe, and that we share a world with many other species that are just as important and deserving as us, if not more," she says. "Only when we let go of our own self-importance and ego, are we able to understand our true place on earth, and our role in the wider ecosystem."
For more on Paris and her work, visit her website, wellerbootpoetry.wordpress.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.