This week, I was lucky enough to talk with my friend Tessa Berman, a Wolfe Curatorial Fellow (and poet in her own right), who serves as a research assistant on the upcoming UVA Special Collections exhibit, “Anne Spencer: I am Here!” Even over email, Tessa’s passion for preserving Anne Spencer’s legacy and celebrating Spencer’s timeless, layered verse is undeniable. So undeniable, that I ended our conversation with my copy of J. Lee Greene’s Time's Unfading Garden open to the end, so I could re-read my favorite Spencer poems. In our wide-ranging conversation, we discuss our favorite Spencer poetry and scholarship, Tessa’s path to becoming involved in the exhibition, and debunk some misconceptions about Anne Spencer’s work!
Cassie: Let’s start at the beginning. Who is Anne Spencer and why has she been so understudied compared to other Harlem Renaissance poets?
Tessa: Anne Spencer was a Lynchburg, VA based poet, Civil Rights activist, educator, gardener, and thinker of the Harlem Renaissance. Her poetry is incredibly nuanced and through her activist and educational work spanning her life, she truly helped to better the conditions for Black individuals living in Lynchburg! Spencer’s poetry was often overlooked in comparison to that of other Harlem Renaissance creators as some critics thought she did not discuss race enough within her poetry (which is simply untrue—see her poem "White Things") and they viewed her pieces as beautiful, formal, antiquated garden poems. This is a notion that all of us on the exhibit team (as well as numerous other Spencer scholars) have sought to push back against!
I love that! There’s definitely a tendency to limit poets to specific genres and categories, as if ecopoets can only write about nature, Black poets can only write about race, and female-identified poets can only write about gender. Anne Spencer’s poetry is multifaceted and refuses to be contained -- poems about her garden often also explore race, environment, gender, and religion. Do you have a favorite Anne Spencer poem?
If I could only pick one—which is a nearly impossible task—I would probably have to say "Substitution" is my favorite Spencer poem. The balance she strikes between the constricted, traditional sonnet form and the radical idea of a woman-directed love act doing away with the need for substitutionary atonement is singular in its brilliance and so powerful, in my opinion! Though, “Po Little Lib” is just phenomenal as well!
I also love “Substitution,” but I’d have to say my current favorite is probably "Requiem." “The grave restores what finds its bed” is a line that speaks so beautifully to cycles of rebirth, de/re-composition, and recycling within her work. I know that you’ve studied those themes within Anne Spencer’s poetry, as well as within her eclectic writing practices, which included writing on the walls, the backs of magazines, and in used diaries. Tell me a bit more about your primary research areas!
My research on Spencer has primarily centered around her marginalia! Specifically, I have examined the modifications she made to her personal copies of collections of poetry and light verse in order to gain insight into her as a reader. Of course, as Spencer is a writer known for drafting on unconventional surfaces, I have encountered poetry manuscript material in her books, which I have traced throughout the papers to establish timelines of the evolution of her poems too!
I can’t wait to see the marginalia corner of the exhibit! Is there any other part of the exhibit you are most excited for everyone to see?
I’m honestly just so excited that more people will be reading the Spencer poems housed at the heart of the exhibit! I’ve found that so few people are independently familiar with her work, but after being introduced, her pieces tend to resonate deeply with a broad audience!
I’ve definitely had that experience becoming more familiar with her work this semester. Once you read one Anne Spencer poem, you can’t help but dig into her full catalog and read them all! How did you first become familiar with her work? And how did you get involved in the exhibit?
I started working on the exhibit as a curatorial fellow in January of this year! However, my work on Spencer began in 2023. I first started exploring the poet’s marginalia as part of an independent study with Professor Andrew Stauffer that sought to build upon his Book Traces project by comparing and contrasting markings generated by common readers and published poets. After I began truly sorting through the papers, we both were so taken with Spencer’s poetry, point of view, and creative process that we did away with the common reader portion of the study in order to devote more time to her! After this shift in focus, Professor Stauffer put me in touch with Professor Alison Booth, who extensively studied Spencer, to get some second opinions. And, after a long and moving discussion of our shared admiration of Spencer as both a poet and a person, Professor Booth offered me a position working alongside her on the exhibit!
[The exhibition itself started when] the University acquired the papers of Anne Spencer and the Spencer family in 2008. By showing some of the materials we house here in special collections, we hope to direct visitors to the Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum in Lynchburg, directed by Shaun Spencer-Hester, the poet’s granddaughter.
You hear that, readers? If you like what you see at the exhibit, Anne Spencer’s house is only a short train ride away. And if you manage to make the trip soon before the weather fully turns, you’ll be able to see the garden in bloom! Okay, time for some rapid fire questions. There’ll be a lot to see at the exhibit, so let’s do some favorites to help orient our readers, so they have some things to look for as they go through the exhibit. Do you have a favorite Anne Spencer quote or anecdote?
My favorite Spencer anecdote is probably from the intro of "Taboo": “By hell there is nothing you can do that you want to do and by heaven you are going to do it anyhow.”
That’s a good one! My favorite Spencer line is the one from “Requiem” I shared earlier, or the entirety of "Earth, I Thank You." That’s maybe cheating, but it is hard to pick just one! Do you have a favorite Anne Spencer scholar?
Oh my goodness! That’s truly an impossible question! Every Spencer scholar I have been lucky enough to meet has been so knowledgeable and kind! It’s moving to see so many impassioned people working to bring Spencer to the forefront of the literary conversation—where she belongs!
That’s exactly right! And that’s exactly what you all are doing with “Anne Spencer: I am Here!” Okay, I’m sure our readers are dying to know by now: when is the exhibit opening and where? And, what can people expect when they visit?
The exhibit is opening on October 22, 2024 in the main gallery of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at UVA! Visitors should expect to find documents, books, photographs and other artifacts relating to different spheres of Anne Spencer’s life, accompanied by interactive elements!
