The space was smaller than I expected, with bright white walls, exposed ducts, and fluorescent lights that gave the new extension to the long-time used bookstore a subtle industrial aesthetic. Rows of chairs faced a small wooden platform with two black leather armchairs perched on top. Nearly every seat was taken. As the cool breeze of February 27, 2026, died away with the closing door, I glanced around the room. The conversations among the attendees quieted just enough for me to feel the weight of dozens of eyes. I understood why: I was unmistakably the youngest person there. As they swished the red wine that lingered in their cups and returned to their conversations, I nodded an awkward greeting to the crowd and quietly sped toward one of the open seats in the front.
I had been looking forward to attending the double poetry reading at Earnest & Hadley’s bookstore in Tuscaloosa, featuring poets John Miller and Kendall Dunkelberg. John Miller, who serves as assistant director of the New College at the University of Alabama, and Kendall Dunkelberg, director of the Creative Writing MFA program at the Mississippi University for Women, carried themselves with the poise of experienced educators. When the reading began, the poets settled into the leather armchairs at the front of the room. Miller rested a cup of wine on the end table between them and opened his book, How My Father Became a Boat (Fernwood Press, 2025). Dunkelberg placed his water beside it, holding a well‑worn copy of Tree Fall With Birdsong (Fernwood Press, 2025).
After a brief exchange of introductions, Miller began reading. As he spoke, the mourning that shaped his collection became immediately apparent. The poems center on the death of his father, and the language is imbued in the landscapes of Mobile Bay, where Miller grew up. Water, in particular, permeated much of his imagery, including the stormy bay that seemed always under rain—fitting for one of the wettest cities in the United States—along with its swamps, rivers, and the “hurricun’ lilies” that, as he fondly described them, spill across the ecotone between land and ocean. The book’s title, How My Father Became a Boat, arose from a moment along one of these rivers, Miller explained, recalling how a young relative watched a toy boat drift among the waves after his father’s passing.
Dunkelberg’s work took a different approach, though grief was threaded through his poems as well. His writing bursts forth with the flora and fauna of the South. There was a particular focus on its resident birds, including magpies, thrashers, herons, flickers, and golden swamp warblers. Plants, too, had a prominent role in his writing. I was moved by his use of the flowered cancer root—an herbaceous species native to North America—in a poem about his sister, as he contrasted its delicate white form against the illness she endured. In his works, tree trunks became the grand buttresses of cathedrals, crows were the characters of his own creation story, and the yellow anther of a spiderwort became a soul after death. As Miller joked, Dunkelberg simply made the environment “pop,” and I found myself agreeing. Dunkelberg’s poem “The Golden Swamp Warbler,” in particular, stuck with me long after the reading ended. I can still recall his calm voice reading the lines:
We drift close as quietly as we can and admire
this bright gift of color, until this splash of gold
against the blue of lake and sky flashes away.
Upon hearing this stanza, I was entranced by the image of a golden bird flitting above a lake, both its reflection and the bird itself occupying the endless mirage of blue that melds where water meets the sky. I was, for a moment, inside the canoe alongside Dunkelberg. His integration of the environment into larger concepts left me wildly impressed and wanting to peer into the weathered, heavily annotated version of Tree Fall With Birdsong that Dunkelberg brought with him.
As the poets continued alternating between their selections, I found myself studying the room as much as the readings. People leaned forward in their chairs, nodding at certain lines, tilting their heads at others, and even occasionally gesturing to their neighbors with an expression of approval, suggesting some sense of familiarity with the small community around them. I felt strangely suspended between participation and observation in this exercise, still aware of my initial introduction to the space. Yet, I was pulled in by the cadence of the poems, especially Dunkelberg’s. His voice carried a commanding, yet calm tone that lessened my own anxiety, making it easier to lose myself in the imagery rather than the discomfort of being “new” to the space.
When the reading concluded, the room seemed to revert to its bright, gallery‑like atmosphere. I’ve been to poetry readings before, most of them on campus at the University of Alabama, and I’ve never left feeling quite like I did that night. I kept circling back to the same question: why didn’t I enjoy it in the way I thought I would?
The answer, I think, is that I felt like an outsider. Even in the city where I live, there is an older community of poets and poetry‑lovers whose worlds rarely intersect with my own. I’ve always abstractly known this, but being confronted with it so directly was jarring. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that we share a place and a passion but are completely unfamiliar with one another. I imagine that in a town where young people are only present for a few years—sometimes even months—at a time, a strong relationship between these two demographics is particularly hard to establish. I recognize that this is the student’s burden to carry, however. Having attended very few off-campus poetry events during my time in Tuscaloosa, I now understand that I am, indeed, part of the problem. While the Tuscaloosa community outside of the UA campus works to create places for poetry to be seen and heard, I encourage college students to seek out and support these opportunities. As I found from my experience on that cold, February night, excellent poets await you.