Nikky Finny Report

Thank you to everyone at Contemporary Writers Blog for allowing me to do a guest post. I am excited to write about my experience with hearing Nikky Finney speak at Butler. Butler University hosted Nikky Finney as apart of their visiting writer series. It gave Butler students a wonderful opportunity to talk with Ms. Finney about her life as a poet, ask questions about her work, and it gave Ms. Finney a chance to offer insight to Butler students. I did not know what to expect going into her talk. This was my first opportunity to meet an author in a setting other than a book signing. The room was filled with more students than I was expecting. I arrived 7 minutes early thinking that this would provide ample time to get a good seat, however when I arrived there was only room to sit on the floor in front of Ms. Finney. I was also surprised with the amount of young people interested in what she was saying. Every student that I noticed had a notebook
Finney, who sat on a large leather wingback chair in front of me,used a beautiful analogy of fishing with her grandma and putting the fish back into the pond similar to how as humans we need to put something back into the world to describe how students should put their passions to use. A student asked Ms. Finney a question that I believe is not only important for college age students to understand, but also for anyone who is currently unhappy with their career. The student essentially asked “how do you balance pursuing your dreams while also maintaining basic needs of life such as food, shelter, and health insurance”. Ms. Finney explained how it does not need to be either or. We can still be an artist as well as an entrepreneur and we can incorporate our art form into our life, however we need to be an artist with a plan. As a student pursuing both of his passions, her response allowed me to relate to Ms. Finney on a more personal level and allowed me appreciate her poetry more than I previously