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Poetry in Motion:
A Creative Journey
In her poetry and her classroom, English Professor
Chet’la Sebree challenges the stories we tell ourselves
about art and how to make sense of the world.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH CHET’LA SEBREE
refuses to be confined within the margins—whether in
the classroom or in print.
A poet, essayist and educator, Sebree isn’t afraid to break
free of form and convention. Within a book—within a single
poem—she can switch from sonnets and prose paragraphs to
Tweet-like snippets, pop-culture references and lines that
literally run off the page.
“I ask myself, ‘What is a poem? What does it look like?’
And my answer is: It doesn’t have to look just one way to
arrive at a truth,” she said. “There’s no one shape for a poem.”
Sebree’s writing stretches both styles and subjects. In
her 2019 debut Mistress, she channeled the ghost of Sally
Hemings through the words of a modern-day woman—also
named Chet’la—in a shared vision of Black women’s voices
and bodies. In her 2025 collection, Blue Opening, she takes
on no less a topic than human origins—from the miracle of
motherhood and the anguish of illness to the birth of the
universe itself. And in her 2026 essay collection Turn Where,
she explores her own relationship to home, heritage and
belonging through travel.
“I like to say I abandon people in an ocean of their
own emotions,” she laughed.
Sebree is equally willing to defy expectations in the
classroom. Teaching undergraduate creative writing, she
coaxes students into loving verse with museum visits and
12 | www.columbian.gwu.edu
exercises like piecing together poems from an alphabet of
refrigerator magnets. For Sebree, converting poetry skeptics
is an artistic challenge. “I will bring you into the light with
me,” she declared.
Still, Sebree says she finds herself increasingly defending
the value of poetry in the age of artificial intelligence. With
algorithmic content threatening to flatten creativity, she
argues that poetry—and the emotional truths it uncovers—
is more important today than ever.
“Where do we turn to render the world in a way that
makes sense?” she said. “For many people, it’s poetry.”
A Poet’s Path
Sebree always knew she wanted a career in writing. A
voracious reader as a child, she was captivated by books
like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso
Sea and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
“I thought I was going to be a novelist,” she recalled. “Now
when I think about writing novels—it’s just so many words!
So, no, I didn’t always read poetry; I didn’t always write poetry.
It just kind of found me.”
Her first poem was a seventh-grade composition called
“The Wind Whispering Sea.” She remembers little about
it—“I would probably really dislike it now,” she said—but
still looks back with fondness at the title’s rhythms. “Wind,
whispering, sea. It’s got great assonance!”
