Beyond the Trees: The Poetics of Wellesley

Matilda Berke ‘21

Paulson Initiative Intern 2019-20

From the very beginning of this internship, I knew I was going to write poems about the Wellesley landscape because I wanted to engage with the New England writers I most admire -- Dickinson, Thoreau, Frost -- and the varied ways in which they express themselves through the language of their environment. In an attempt to make my thoughts more universally evocative, I paired my written impressions of place with literal representations of how I see place (each poem is accompanied by a picture of campus that had either directly inspired my writing or was associated with the themes I was thinking about). After the pandemic scattered the Wellesley community, I found myself acutely missing my physical connection to the landscape and decided to restructure my poetry collection into a tour of sorts: a guide to seeing the college through, perhaps, a different kind of lens. I’m hoping that in the months to come -- whether or not we find ourselves back on campus in the fall -- this can help shorten the distance between ourselves and the places we love.

Find Beyond the Trees: The Poetics of Wellesley here

Collaborators: 

Suzanne Langridge

Bindu Nicholson '16 

Dan Chiasson