Villanova English Professor Confronts Environmental Change Through Poetry in New Book
Villanova, Pa — In her new book Flood Plain, poet and English Professor Lisa Sewell, PhD, engages with the pressing realities of environmental change through creative writing. The poetry collection investigates wild lands, coastal regions, wetlands and dam-ruined rivers—landscapes that have been altered by human activity.
Dr. Sewell’s inspiration for Flood Plain stems from her teaching within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She developed a graduate course on ecopoetics, as well as an undergraduate course on contemporary literature and the environment that focuses on writers’ responses to a changing climate. “The more I read and talked with my students, the more it felt impossible for me to keep my anxiety and grief about climate change and environmental destruction out of my writing,” says Dr. Sewell. “The poems in this book grew out of my efforts to record my experience of living on a damaged planet in a changed and changing climate in the midst of a sixth extinction event.”
Through her work, Dr. Sewell contributes to the evolving genre of ecopoetry, grappling with themes of loss and resilience. “Flood Plain participates in the tradition of ecopoetry with poems that emphasize the connections between bodies—human, animal and botanical—and center on the more-than-human,” explains Dr. Sewell.
A faculty member at Villanova since 1998, Dr. Sewell has played a transformative role in shaping the English Department’s programming and curriculum. She founded the Villanova Literary Festival, an annual event in its 27th year that welcomes acclaimed poets and novelists to campus to present readings, and created the team-taught course Authors On and Off the Page, bringing the writers from the literary festival into the classroom to engage with students. From 2017 to 2021, she held the prestigious title of the Luckow Family Endowed Chair in English, a distinction that recognizes exceptional scholarship and contributions to the field. Her work at Villanova is also interdisciplinary, as she served as the co-director of the Gender and Women’s Studies program for eight years.
Dr. Sewell earned her PhD from Tufts University, an MFA from New York University and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of several poetry collections, including The Way Out,ĚýName Withheld,ĚýImpossible Object, which won the Tenth Gate Prize; Birds of North America, a collaboration with artist Susan Hagen and fellow poet, Nathalie Anderson; and a chapbook,ĚýLong Corridor, which won the Keystone Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous journals such as The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Sierra Review, Prairie Schooner, Laurel Review and Harvard Review. Dr. Sewell is the co-editor of several collections of essays on contemporary American poetry and poetics, including American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics with Claudia Rankine, and American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language with Kazim Ali.
About ĂŰĚŇTV’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, ĂŰĚŇTV’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been the heart of the Villanova learning experience, offering foundational courses for undergraduate students in every college of the University. Serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, the College is committed to fortifying them with intellectual rigor, multidisciplinary knowledge, moral courage and a global perspective. The College has more than 40 academic departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences.