The collected poems are “rooted in place, in the landscape — or more accurately, the seascape,” Wentworth said in an interview with the Charleston City Paper, explaining how her new book shows the interconnection of joy and heartbreak — almost like the rising and falling tide and how one cannot exist without the other.

“I always think about where you hear poetry outside of a poetry reading,” she said. “For a lot of us, we hear poetry at weddings and at funerals. These are times of intense emotions and people want to find the words that say how they feel. … It’s just it’s just a primal thing. Poetry lends itself to dealing with that in a unique way.”

Poetry as history

Wentworth served as the state’s first Poet Laureate beginning in 2003. In 2015, she wrote a poem, “One River, One Boat,” (for which this collection is named), that was cut from Governor Nikki Haley’s inauguration ceremony. The snub made national media and sparked a conversation about the Confederate flag that was then flying on the grounds of the S.C. statehouse.

“With this particular poem, I was really inspired by the inaugural poets for President Obama — Elizabeth Alexander and Richard Blanco, who really wrote very place-centered poetry. Studying them got me thinking about all the people who aren’t really going to be represented up on that stage….I wanted to write a poem about people.”

So she took to Facebook to see what issues were on her fellow South Carolinians’ minds.

“I posted saying, I’m writing for this occasion — what would you say? What are you thinking about? And I was flooded with responses, most of them having to do with social justice issues, education, health care.”

So she decided to use the motif of a river to describe systemic racism in the Palmetto state.

But when Wentworth sent the poem to Haley’s team for approval, she got an email back saying that there wouldn’t be time for the poem to be read, despite the fact that it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

“People got really upset. … It hit a nerve, because it was addressing things that we’re still dealing with.”

After the poem was cut, Congressman James Clyburn read Wentworth’s “One River, One Boat” into the Congressional record in 2015, saying he “hopes the people of South Carolina, across the country, and peoples around the world are as touched by her words as I have been.”

“Poets are meant to be truth tellers; to illuminate things that don’t get discussed in other parts of our lives. … I am really excited about this book, because this poem and others that were written around that time have never been collected together like this.”

Now teaching at Wright State University in Celina, Ohio, Wentworth shows her students how to approach reading and writing poetry “almost like a documentary filmmaker.”

“We describe the lived experience, the human experience rather than say, the statistics.”

Wentworth shows her skills at different types of writings in the book, from eulogies, to essays, to poetry written as state laureate, many of which are “occasional poems,” meaning they were written to be read out loud. “It’s a totally different approach than writing for the page,” she said.

“Many times, I’m speaking at joyous occasions like the opening of the Arthur Ravenel Bridge or Food and Wine Festival. And then others are really horrific moments in our state. … Some are from occasions in my own life. … There’s a real range of joy and grief,” she said, on both the personal and collective scale.

In the book’s advance praise, former Charleston poet laureate Marcus Amaker said, “A poet is a historian. If they are tuned in to the community around them, their words can be important documents of an era. South Carolina is a complicated and beautiful place. If you want to know the nuance of the Palmetto State, read Marjory’s poems.”

The release of the book will be celebrated by a reading and book signing reception at 6 p.m. Sept. 12 at Circular Congregational Church. For more information about Marjory Wentworth, visit marjorywentworth.com.