John Cabot University had the honor of hosting poet Nicole Sealey as the Writer in Residence for the 2025 Summer Institute of Creative Writing and Literary Translation. Prior to her Writer’s Talk held on June 9th, Sealey sat down with Berenice Cocciolillo and Noelle Mazzoni of the Web Communications Office to talk about her time at JCU, as well as the process behind her work and her deep love for poetry.
Born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida, Sealey is the author of several books of poetry. Her most recent work, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure (Knopf, 2023), was the winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, and an excerpt was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is also the author of Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017), a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named (Northwestern University Press, 2016), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize.
She has worked for Cave Canem Foundation, an organization dedicated to the artistic and professional growth of Black poets, and other literary non-profits. She is currently writing a collection of essays tentatively titled Talking Out of Turn: Notes from the Field, about her time as a non-profit executive and the “micro and macro aggressions” she experienced, according to Sealey.
The Writing Process for Sealey’s The Ferguson Report: An Erasure
Sealey described the creative process behind her latest literary work, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, as well as the challenges she faced in turning a police report into a piece of poetry.
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice drafted The Ferguson Report after the murder of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. “The report outlines the biased policing and court practices in Missouri,” explained Sealey. “For whatever reason, I was drawn to it. I just couldn’t get it out of my head, and I instinctively started erasing it.”
The technique of erasure consists of erasing parts of an existing text, be it prose or verse, until only the words that make up a brand-new creative work are left. It took Sealey almost five years to go through the 100-page report, reading and erasing and rereading until she was satisfied with her work. “It was difficult to remain in the report for so long, given its content,” confessed Sealey.
“One of the challenges was to create lyric where there was none,” said Sealey. “The report is dry, unlike poetry. I had to create worlds within a world that felt oppressive. While there’s hope in the movements that I managed to pull from the report, they still feel heavy.”
Can Poetry Be Taught?
In the conversation with Nicole Sealey, she was posed the question, “Can poetry be taught?”
“I think the fundamentals of poetry can be taught,” replied Sealey. “But it’s up to the poet to do the work, to sit alone in a room, as the writer Michael Ventura notes, until the writing comes. A writer is disciplined.”
“I always teach that reading is very important, because there’s so much to be learned from other writers – what to do and what not to do.” This led Sealey to talk about her time in Rome. “Walking along the same cobblestone streets others have walked, reading what others have written, what others have read – it connects me to the larger world.”
Sealey believes that reading widely is an opportunity to understand others. “We’re all thinking through the same things in our poems,” she explained. “We’re looking at birds, we’re looking at trees, but we’re looking at them in different contexts. I’m not writing about the nightingale in the same way Keats wrote about the nightingale. But after having read his ode, I can further appreciate Keats’ nightingale from two hundred years ago, which complicates my own poems.”
Writer’s Talk: What is a Perfect Poem?
On June 9th, Nicole Sealey held her Writer’s Talk on JCU’s Secchia Terrace, concluding her time as Writer in Residence. She read and commented on the poem “Song” by American poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly (1951-2016), the author of three poetry collections and winner of numerous awards.
“Samuel Taylor Coleridge once described poetry as ‘the best words in the best order,’” said Sealey, starting her talk. “While there are many good poems worthy of conversation, there are very few poems that have perfected Coleridge’s “the best words in the best order.” In reading and analyzing “Song,” the aim of Sealey’s Writer’s Talk was to explain why, in her opinion, “Song” is indeed perfect. “It is a poem that poets aspire to write and do not tire of reading,” said Sealey.
The poem gains momentum with each line, starting from the title itself, which creates anticipation in the reader’s mind. The poem is made up of haunting juxtapositions: intimate and innocent images are put in contrast with the themes of violence, loss, and tension. “Song” is a perfect poem because it contains memorable images, reveals itself slowly, and employs clear and simple wording. Kelly leaves space to feel every word and does not impose a specific sentiment on the reader. “…I go to poems to feel. However, I don’t want to be told what to feel,” stated Sealey.
According to Sealey, Peter Meinke argues that the poems we most admire do the following: one, reveal their secrets slowly; two, surprise and satisfy simultaneously; three, have unique music; four, are memorable; five, speak to the unanswerable; six, live up to their promise. “‘Song’ does all of the above,” Sealey argued.
“I never met Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Her students described her ‘as private as a diary.’ I didn’t know her in life, but I love her work,” remarked Sealey. “As said by one of Kelly’s students, ‘You want to know the hard, clear soul of Brigit Pegeen Kelly? Read her poems.’ This, I believe, is sound advice.”
Sealey concluded the lecture by inviting students to read the work of Brigit Pegeen Kelly, beginning with “Song.” As the poem notes, “This song is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.”
