INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS WATKINS

09 September 2025

Interviewed by Morgan Hunter (Outreach Coordinator) for The Dodge Fall 2025 Newsletter

Morgan Hunter: Thank you so much for joining me, Chris, and if you wouldn't mind, please feel free to re-introduce yourself and share a bit about your craft.

Chris Watkins: Yeah! I am a poet from Florida, I consider myself an eco-poet (so I like to write about the environment), and I consider myself a formalist. I really like to use forms, both contemporary and like nonce forms, as well as ancient and received forms. And I also am a trans poet, so I like to call myself a gender non-conformalist, which is a term that I coinedcreated meaning just a formalist poet who likes to play with form to talk about gender.

MH: Which, I reiterate, I love so much. Let’s get that ball rolling. As we started to discuss before I hit some technical issues, your publication that The Dodge readers will know from our Summer 2025 issue, “Controlled Burn[ing] Haibun,” that work plays with form, that work is very much centered around your passions with eco-writing. I would love to hear more about your inspirations for that work.

CW: It's based on a real place, a national wildlife refuge near Tallahassee, where I live, called St Mark's Wildlife Refuge, which is a longleaf pine ecosystem, so it depends on burning. Longleaf pines will only open their seeds when they are burnt and when the ground around them is burnt, and if that ground isn't burnt [longleaf pines will not seed]. I think ideally, it's like one to three years, but you know, the longer they go, the harder it is for longleaf pines to keep producing and for it to stay a longleaf pine habitat. So we do a lot of controlled burning in Florida, which is really great. It's really great for the ecosystem, and it's really great for not making our fire-dependent ecosystem into kind of what it is out west. And then the form, the burning haibun is a form created by the poet, Torrin Greathouse. She is an amazing poet, one of my favorites, and she created it. It's a play on the traditional haibun in that it uses the traditional haibun–this really old Japanese form, and it would be prose interspersed with haiku. The burning haibun does a prose block, and then it does an erasure of that prose block, and then it does an erasure of the erasure into a haiku. So I thought it was fun to use that, like blackout, as a kind of burning and and her idea, for the poem, is that the haiku should be revealed and be within the whole thing the entire time, but it's like the erasure is making something. I think that's the same thing that happens in a real controlled burn that I really like.

MH: That is truly incredible. You explain it so well because you're used to working with the form and working with your subject matter, but the connection—because I feel so many students, especially of poetry, are so hesitant to work with form, because they find it so structured, but you're making real connections between your inspiration, physical inspiration, and these alternative and experimental forms.

CW: Yeah, and I think Torrin does a really good job of taking these kinds of older forms and turning them into this new thing that seems both rooted in this long tradition and really exciting. I also really like it because she's a trans poet, so it feels with the haibun like it's connected to this long nature tradition, and then with her kind of reinvigorating it, it feels like it's part of this amazing trans tradition. So I really love that.

MH: Oh, that is so beautiful. There's so many layers to everything. And, oh, I could honestly just talk to you about this single poem all day, but we have so much to talk about! So this format, this experimental format, some would say, this reinvention of old form. How do you feel that contributes to, specifically the reader's experience as it's a little new and fresh compared to some things that The Dodge has historically published?

CW: I hope it's a little bit weird. I think that experience of seeing something like torn apart or, or, you know, blacked out, I hope that that does kind of make people feel like, “Oh, that's weird.” And the fact that it's revealing something I hope that's what the reader feels. That's certainly, I think what it feels like to write a burning haibun is like, “You're trying to reveal this” when I write them, and I've written a number of them at this point. When I write them, I try to make it feel like even if I know maybe what the haiku is gonna be beforehand, at least [in] that middle section I've got so much erasure to do. It feels like I'm discovering the poem, and then sometimes I'm rediscovering the original prose block, because I'm trying to make something work in a lower section. And so I hope that the reader feels like they're also discovering something.

MH: Again, if I was here and had you for nine hours, that was going to be one of my questions: where do you even start working with one of those pieces? But I completely agree. It is so unclear where you—as a reader—where you as the artist, have started in the process of writing, whether you start from the ground up, or you start from the prose down, and it makes so much sense to hear you say that it's kind of everything all at once, and I just adore that.

CW: I also love the idea—I've never read one backwards—but I love the idea of reading one backwards. I'm like, “I need to try that at some point.” I think that'd be really cool. I need to go back and read some of Torrin’s and see how they read backwards, and then go read some of mine and see how they read backwards. I love that.

MH: I love breaking form so much.

CW: Yeah! Yeah, exactly!

MH: But switching gears just a little bit, because you are not just described as a poet, you are also often described as an environmental activist. How did you come to embrace this part of your identity?

CW: So my writing and my activism, I think, really go hand-in-hand. I try to make them go hand-in-hand. I am a lover of the natural world, obviously. And I think a big, big turning point for me, when I really started writing more and more about the natural world, was moving to Florida. I actually grew up in Illinois, and moving to Florida, I love the swamps, I love the wetlands here, and I consider the wetlands of Florida a really trans, nonbinary space. They're not quite water, they're not quite land, they're just kind of this strange, ethereal space. Also I'm a board member of Apalachicola Riverkeeper, and I got to be that from going on thisT long river trek, is what we call it. It's this five day river trip, and we raise money, and it's like a charity marathon sort of situation. But I think after going on that, I really started writing a lot about the Appalache. I started writing a lot more about the climate crisis. I would say my first book is in three sections, and the middle section is all about eco-poetics, but then the book that I'm working on now it's pretty central throughout the entirety of the book. So not that I wasn't thinking about it before, but I'm like thinking about it more and more and more now as I go on. It's really shaped who I am as a writer.

MH: That's wonderful. It makes perfect sense—having your activism tied so much to your art because any reader, even from just your Dodge publication, can see how tied you are to the world around you. I especially love the idea of wetlands and swamp being this like nonbinary, trans space because you're right, it is. It falls into this other region, other world, and so much is there that we have yet to uncover.

CW: I have a piece about that in [Terrain.org]. I also kind of think it's why people hate both wetlands and trans people because we're really hard to define. People don't like that, they want shit in rigid categories, and a swamp is kind of hard to define for people who want that American picket fence life. A swamp is confusing to that kind of mentality. Even though Florida might not seem like this trans paradise, I find it to be this weird place.

MH: I have grown up in the Midwest. I haven't always been in Pittsburgh. I've been in Indiana, I've been in Ohio. I've traveled a bit through our south. It's one of those things where so many people are so quick to write off the regions based on the political map colors, when in reality, there's so much world and so many people. I really commend you and your work in living in somewhere that might be very difficult politically, but still persevering for your art and for your passion like that is incredible.

CW: Thank you. I love Florida so much, and I also agree people do discount the South, and they discount the large, large numbers of particularly people of color who live in the south. It's like, you can't say all the South is racist, because there's a ton of particularly black folks who live here. And not that black folks can't be racist, but it seems like you're discounting a large portion of that population who are not racist and just looking over them, and that feels kind of racist! There are super—especially in the area where I live—there are super thriving, like populations of rural black folks and indigenous folks. When I was doing my PhD, I had a professor who had really long family ties to this area,  both indigenous and like black familial ties to this area, and I think some people overlook that when they think about the South. It's something I've had the privilege of learning after coming down here. I think it’s really cool.

MH: That's so, so great. There are so many people and so many different walks of life, and I specifically am very interested in terms of like people that you've worked with. You have already said it, but what exactly is your involvement with the Apalachicola Riverkeeper Foundation?

CW: I'm a board member now. I started off with the organization three years ago on our biggest fundraising event is called River Trek. A group of usually around fifteen of us will paddle the whole length of the Appalache which is a hundred, about a hundred and ten miles from its source right on the Florida-Georgia line, all the way down to the Gulf. And so we'll paddle the whole thing in about five days and that's where we raise the majority of our funds for the organization. I was on that trip thinking, “this is a cool organization. I've kind of heard of them. I like paddling, and I like nature, and this will be great.” And then I just really, really fell in love with the organization, and with this river in particular. It's probably the most endangered river in the south, maybe, and it's definitely the largest river by volume in Florida. It pumps out the most water of any river in Florida. And it connects us all the way up to the Appalachians. It comes from two other rivers that meet right on the Florida-Georgia line, the Chattahoochee and the Flint. So it's also just this really cool southern coercion, or like cohesive point, that I think just has a lot of power, and it's really inspired my writing.

MH: That’s incredible. I don't think I fully grasped [River Trek] doing research into your organization. I've read a bit about River Trek, but I don't think I fully grasped what exactly is going on. That's really incredible.

CW: And then we use all those funds to pay our full time staff, and to do things like… So we just sued this oil company and our Department of Environmental Protection in Florida because they wanted to drill in the Apalachicola River basin, and so we sued them to stop that, and then we got a bill passed to make sure that it doesn't happen again. We've done a lot of really amazing work to protect the river. All of that money that we raise for river trek is super important, and really helps us do that work and continue to keep this place the super pristine, amazing place that it is.

MH: I, unfortunately, being so far north, was unfamiliar with the extent of everything you guys have been doing, “unfamiliar with your game,” as the youth, I think, say. But you, obviously, other than River Trek, you all do other workshops and events, as that's what we're also talking about today. The next one is coming up on October 11th, and that is the Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s Virtual Nature Writing Workshop. Would you be able to share a bit more about the workshop, and then what participants might have to look forward to? 

CW: Definitely. It will bring together three different teachers, instructors, whatever you want to call it. Myself, Dr. Liesel Hamilton over at [The University of Florida] who's amazing. I'm primarily a poet, and I write a little nonfiction, but Liesel is a nonfiction writer through and through. And then CMarie Fuhrman, who is a Western writer, and I got to know her at the Elk River Writers Workshop, which is this amazing workshop out in Montana that's based right near the Yellowstone River, which is also called the Elk River. She has this amazing book called Salmon Weather, and she is, and then this other book called Camp Beneath the Dam. So she's both a nonfiction writer and a poet who will be bringing kind of both of those expertise as our keynote speaker. I'm really excited. It's two people whose work I think is super excellent. I forgot to mention, Liesel is writing a book about the seasons in Florida. Seasonality in Florida is really strange, because, like, our leaves don't change until December (if they change at all). And then, most people think of winter as a dead time in nature, but actually in Florida, it's when we're most alive. It's when all of the birds come down. It's this beautiful, beautiful time. I'm really excited to work with these two people whose work I really admire, and to hopefully bring their expertise in both natural observation, and I mean, they're both just killer writers too. Their observational skills, their writing skills. And then I'm hoping, you know, for my own writing skills too, to share some of my ideas on formalism, but also I hope the workshop as a whole can teach people how to connect that activist side to their creative side. I think CMarie is really good at that. I think Liesel is really good at that, and it's definitely something that I try to do a lot, and I think that many writers feel called toward it.

MH: There's definitely a little bit for everyone, I would say! Maybe. I would like to think I'm unbiased, but we'll see. I think then we really only have one more big burning question for you today, Chris. What are both participants in this workshop, and also in general readers of The Dodge, what are you hoping that these people take away whenever they are interacting with your writing or your teachings?

CW: I hope… and I cannot think of who the quote is from now. Oh, it's Juliana Spahr! Juliana Spahr has this great quote that I really like that I think a lot about, both in my own teaching and in my own writing, which is she said something to the effect of when nature poets of the past were writing about nature, even when they got the birds right, they didn't often focus on the bulldozer off to the side that was about to plow over the birds’ habitat. And so I have taken that “bird and bulldozer" mentality in both my writing and in my teaching, that you can't focus only on the bird, because if you ignore the bulldozer, then the bird is going to die. We need to have this kind of activist engagement with nature writing. I think nature writing that doesn't try to, in some way, get people involved in the issues that you're writing about becomes kind of sterile. On the other hand, I don't want it to just be political propaganda. I think part of the power of writing is that it's not a scientific study. It's a time to say, “Hey, birds are beautiful. This is why we love them.” I don't think every poem needs to do everything, but I think when I'm thinking about my career as a whole and when I'm thinking about nature writing as a whole, I think trying to hold both of those things—the bird and the bulldozer together—is really important to me.

MH: That's so perfect. I'm very unfamiliar with Juliana Spar and the quote, but I definitely will look that up in full and have that printed as well because you hit the nail on the head! You can't have all of the celebration of beauty of nature without ignoring everything that is forthcoming, but to focus so much on the negativity and the threats to our world, it just drains you as an artist. I think that's a balance that a lot of young artists and activists are really trying to find right now.

CW: And I want art to be this [balance]. I think a lot about and in my job, we talk a lot about eco-anxiety and people's like, “Ah, butterfly tummy! Butterflies ripping out of my tummy because I'm so anxious about all these things!” And I do want writing to help with that. I want it to both mourn but also celebrate the earth. Sometimes it's good to sit and cry over a poem, and sometimes it's good to be like, “Oh, wow, I like birds! They're really nice!” 

MH: That's perfect. Thank you so much, Chris, for such a phenomenal conversation. It was so great to meet you, especially under this context. I am really excited to share everything we talked about today with all the readers of The Dodge.

CW: I’m super excited for it too!