A conversation with Nandi Comer

The first time I heard Nandi Comer read her poetry aloud, my breath caught in my throat. We sat in a small, quiet library in Spring Lake, and I could feel her words deep within my bones. Excerpts from her poetry collection “Tapping Out” made the room come alive, capturing my attention in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a little kid, reading Shel Silverstein books with an earnest hunger for each new line. A wave of inspiration washed over me as I sat there mesmerized, feeling more at home in that brown plastic folding chair than I had in a while. There was an ache in my chest that I couldn’t quite name, and I was reminded why I love to write.

Comer is the current poet laureate of the state of Michigan. If you didn’t know that was even a title, you probably aren’t alone — there hasn’t been one in more than 60 years. The role, which Comer assumed in April 2023, has been reinstated with the goal of inspiring youth, promoting poetry and giving literature a voice across Michigan and beyond. I had the pleasure of chatting with Comer last month just before she visited the University of Michigan, her alma mater, to give a lecture at the Rackham Graduate School. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, she emphasized the importance of giving poetry a platform but also pointed out that it has a pretty big one already. 

“I think we as a society have deemed poetry important,” Comer said. “We bring out our poets during presidential inaugurations, during funerals, during births, during weddings. … These are important moments in our lives that we’re celebrating and we want a poet to be there.”

Regardless of the groans that tend to fill a classroom when poetry is mentioned, it’s clear that in the so-called “real world” we’ve all agreed that we appreciate poetry as an art form. It can be a tricky one to tackle, and yet we grapple with it so desperately. As Comer walked me through her own journey as a poet, I began to understand why. 

“I’ve been writing unofficially since I was a child,” Comer said. “But I didn’t really start thinking of myself as a professional writer until I was around 25.”

I felt seen, listening to Comer articulate her voyage from hobbyist to professional creative: I’ve spent most of my life reading poetry and jotting down my best attempts in my journal, but I’ve always felt like I had to let it take a backseat to school, work and all the other things society has fooled me into thinking were more important. I struggled to convince myself it could be something beyond just a hobby. Even now, the looks I get when I tell people I’m majoring in English aren’t exactly comforting. 

When I shared this anxiety, Comer explained that for her, breaking down that barrier took a village. Vievee Francis, a fellow poet and University MFA alum, taught a class out of her home for local poets on how to professionalize and get published. Comer attended this class and found a community that propelled her further into her work — pushing her to dive deeper into writing and eventually take what she had created to a publisher.

“We were all writing together,” Comer said. “We really took her lessons and we kept studying and we kept supporting each other, and now they’re some of the most prominent names (in poetry) out of Michigan.”

Even as Comer began to gain confidence in her ability to write as a professional, she was still nudged along by friends and peers. It was ultimately a friend of Comer’s who submitted her work for the role of poet laureate. Comer described to me, with a humble gratitude, her surprise upon realizing she’d been selected for the title.

“If you’re waiting for perfection in your own eyes it may never happen,” Comer said. “You may need to have someone pry it out of your hands and tell you it’s ready.” 

It seems that for all the privacy a poet has between their pen and paper, writing isn’t as solitary of an activity as it may seem. Allowing space for someone to peek in on your work, to give it the necessary praises and critiques, is a valuable step in the journey to make it the best it can possibly be. Yet, even after help from peers and mentors, there are still times I get frustrated by my inability to produce what I deem as good work. Creativity is often an unfortunately grueling exercise in coming to terms with the fact that your work doesn’t have to be perfect right away — in fact, it probably never will be. Comer met me where I was, assuring me she understood this struggle.

“We know how great art can be,” Comer said. “At times it’s almost unfathomable that we, as our young beautiful selves, can create something that would be deemed as important as things that have been created before.”

But she also had a very thoughtful take on this pressure to create earth-shattering art — one that I had never heard before, and that just about blew my mind.

“I don’t think that we really believe that no one loves our stuff,” she said. “But I think that that standard we’ve placed for ourselves allows us to try and achieve it. We’re saying to ourselves, ‘There is something better, and I want to do that.’”

As a constant victim of imposter syndrome, Comer’s way of interpreting it was a game changer. That little voice in my head that tells me I’m not really good enough doesn’t have to be the glaringly defeating voice I always thought it was. It’s not that I’m pretending to be something I never will be — namely, a poet. Maybe it’s just there to tell me that I know I can push myself further, and that I want to.

This revelation is something I did a great deal of introspection in order to unpack. I took to my journal, as I often do, to try and untangle these feelings. I was waxing poetic about all of the complicated emotions that come with learning something new about yourself when I remembered something else that Comer had told me.

“I find poetry to be, at its core, the way in which I can connect to the human condition,” she said. “The freedom of poetry allows us to name things that maybe have not been named before.”

My words began to fall into place in front of me like ducks in a seemingly never-ending row. Poetry isn’t calculus. You don’t learn how to do it with some sort of formula, and memorizing rules isn’t going to do you any good. It’s not about having it all figured out before ink hits the paper. It’s about spilling our insides, messy and tangled like those terrifying bundles of electrical cords we’ve all got in our houses somewhere, straight onto the page. And letting ourselves have the freedom to figure out what it all means, slowly and with intention. To “name the unnamable,” as Comer described it.

In the past, when I sat down to write a poem, I often felt like I was just on the brink of something. Like I was an inch away from something great and I didn’t quite know how to get there. That feeling was so overwhelming that I would often put down my pen and walk away. But in the days since my conversation with Comer, I’ve lingered longer over my pad of paper. I don’t have to know something in its entirety. I don’t have to understand the complexities of my own emotions. I don’t even have to have the words for it all. I just have to start writing.

Statement Columnist Paige Wilson can be reached at wipiage@umich.edu.

Related articles