Anna Sims Bartel. Once described as “part activist, part administrator, and part academic,” I earned my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Cornell and have worked at the intersection of higher education and public life, including most recently The Scholar as Human: Teaching and Research for Public Impact, from Cornell University Press.
My interests all center on making the world a healthier, more beautiful place, which is also how I come to poetry (as Amanda Gorman says, trying to cleanse ourselves with words). I am also stewarding 72 acres of Northern Allegheny Plateau outside of Ithaca, which has reminded me that what we plant is more important than what we kill. The basis of most wisdom traditions is the recognition of pattern, the respect of whole systems and the sacred purposes they contain. My writing grows from this impulse: to learn, to plant, to praise.
As a survivor of a violent alcoholic household, I enjoy the things that support chronic hope: the chaos of my young family; being in, on, or near moving water; the smell of dirt and the good things that grow in it.