USF prof's new poetry collection celebrates Florida's daily rhythm

USF English professor Heather Sellers with her latest poetry collection, “Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators”

In Florida, an evening walk can include a bobcat sighting, a conversation with neighbors, and, of course, alligators.

For poet and University of South Florida professor Heather Sellers, those walks also inspire. Sellers’ latest collection of poetry, “Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators,” is shaped by the observations and conversations that take place during those daily treks.

“When I walk around my neighborhood in the evening, almost every conversation begins with a recitation of what gators each of us has seen on our walk,” she says. “And that’s what inspired the book and its title.”

This is Sellers’ 12th book and the final entry in a trilogy exploring Florida’s environment and natural places. Its 27 poems are organized into sections by season, creating what she describes as a year in Florida “in all its everyday wildness.” The title may sound delightfully Florida, but beneath the humor is a deeper story about connection.

“This is my home state, and there are so many misconceptions about Florida.”

The Florida native has focused much of her writing career on the natural world around her.Her previous collections in the trilogy explored the state’s beautiful but fragile landscapes and the realities of life in a flood zone. This latest collection turns its attention toward suburban life, where wildlife and humanity often meet in unexpected ways.

The source material are the daily observation diaries where Sellers records 10 things she sees and hears each day.

“I try to capture what’s really happening, in small moments, among the people who live here, in our state,” she says.

Sacred art of paying attention

Sellers has studied and written poetry for much of her life. As a child, she fell in love with poets Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Ogden Nash, and began writing what she jokingly calls “terrible imitations.” She later studied the history and craft of poetry while earning a PhD in writing from Florida State University.

She joined USF’s MFA and creative writing faculty in 2013, bringing that lifelong love of language into the classroom. Her own poems, however, are not about chasing complexity. They are about seeing clearly.

“I like to read and to write poems that are clear, with good storytelling, and I embrace humor and close observation,” she says.

That philosophy is evident throughout her newest collection. The subjects are familiar and wonderfully ordinary: a gator in the backyard, a neighbor who has plenty to say about other neighbors, and the question that can stop a conversation in its tracks: “Did you see the bobcat?”

But Sellers sees something larger in these seemingly small encounters.

“The dominant theme is that we are deeply connected to each other, not divided, and there is a kind of sacred grace in simply listening to each other, being present in small, simple, daily ways,” she says.

Florida is often reduced to headlines, stereotypes and its most outrageous moments. Sellers’s work offers a different lens, one that asks readers to slow down and pay attention to the people and places that make up the state’s daily rhythm.

Sellers has three upcoming poetry reading and discussion events.