Class of 2022

We have two pieces of exciting news for this column. First, Tim Strang is starting a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago and would love to connect with other alumni in the area! Second, Mia Nelson has come back with a second interview with us to discuss her debut poetry collection, and I was fortunate enough to get some behind-the-scenes scoops.

I still cannot believe that my last interview with Miawas more than a year ago. The theme of the column was books, and naturally I thought of one of the most well-read people I’ve met. A year later her love for words is bringing her back for a second feature, as she prepares to publish her debut poetry collection, I’ve Never Loved Somebody and Made Them Worse.

Everyone creates different vessels to carry the memories of people, places, and specific emotions at specific times. For some, it’s photos and songs, but Mia’s vessel is her poetry. “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear”—a Joan Didion quote that perfectly captures Mia’s emotional journey from 2018 to 2023, when she got to learn about love, longing, and nature during her four years in Hanover.

In my last interview with Mia, she talked about her Fulbright year abroad, how she discovered her love for teaching in Spain, and the simultaneous excitement and seriousness in shaping creative minds at the University of Vermont, where she’s enrolled as a graduate student. Since graduating from Dartmouth Mia has been looking back at her writing and trying to define a collection that summed her up to this point in life. She realized that her poems conceived at Dartmouth or immediately after all unintentionally speak to growing up and being in love and living in New Hampshire and Vermont. Her poems are typically written in 30 minutes with intense emotions, and she found that the four years at Dartmouth was a collection of these “30 minutes.” Being in college, meeting new people, having first loves, these are all new experiences and emotions that were ultimately heightened by the pandemic, when she felt closeness despite so much physical distance. And the environment—there was so much greenness, nature, walking, and laying around. Being in New Hampshire informed her writing in a unique way and inspired her dedication to people and these special years in life.

Rereading and editing her poems helped her collate a very special and cohesive time into a piece of work. When she looked back at her work from college, Mia now thinks of how brave she was and how brave we all were in a fevered time. Now that a new chapter has begun, Mia’s poems since living in Spain have shifted more toward the lens of a teacher. She’s still living fearlessly, but there’s more perspective and thoughtfulness in her words now than a young mind experiencing life events for the first time. As a teacher, especially of younger children, Mia has learned to communicate difficult experiences and emotions in today’s climate. With no puns intended, some of her work has included kids’ guide to climate change, kids’ guide to the election, and kids’ guide to the obvious. As she starts to mentor others, she’s also writing to herself with kindness. In a similar way everything that was terrible and wonderful about the college years is now put in order and bound with a new perspective in her debut collection.

I’ve Never Loved Somebody and Made Them Worse is coming out on September 15. Mia would also like to dedicate a special shoutout to Maggie Drunkenmiller ’24, who did a fantastic job turning the essence of Mia’s writing into visual work on the cover. Go read it. Sit with her words. Relive your 30-minute bursts of emotions in Hanover, but maybe with a little more kindness this time.

—Louisa Gao, 154 E 29th St., New York, NY 10016; louisa.gao0922@gmail.com