Bard College Berlin News
Student Perspective: An Evening with Jamaica Kincaid
Every student at BCB becomes acquainted with Kincaid’s writing during the Language and Thinking program through her 1978 prose poem Girl. Kincaid expressed continued puzzlement at why this specific piece of writing remains one of her most famous, a question she quite genuinely posed to the audience. She tells us the work’s story – One day, having sat down and read Elizabeth Bishop’s poem In the Waiting Room, Kincaid felt a door open up inside of her and wrote Girl in one uninterrupted sitting. First published in the New Yorker, she felt as if it was the first work that truly represented her style, characterized by stretching sentences, whatever punctuation suits her (“You will begin your sentences if you want to with conjunctions”), and repetition.
Though this story essentially fell onto the page, she emphasized throughout the evening that writing is never an easy process for her. She thinks and overthinks each of her sentences so much that by the time she is finished with a piece of writing, she is bored with it and cannot bring herself to reread it. As to how her writing comes together, Kincaid emphasized that what is most important is constantly learning about as many things as possible that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. She claims that it is only when all of these disparate inspirations come together in her mind that the rhythm and world of a work emerges. In a way, the entire evening was a walk through the branching paths of this mental world of hers.
With a deep and genuine excitement, she sometimes interrupted herself to share facts and anecdotes. Did you know that there is not a single native flower in the Netherlands, every single one of them, including the iconic tulip, a colonial import? Did you know about the plants that recreate the Fibonacci sequence in their shape? Did you know that Jamaica Kincaid loves Bob Dylan and Thomas Jefferson?
After a few questions from the moderating professors, Jamaica Kincaid read an excerpt from her 2013 novel See Now Then, which follows Mrs. and Mr. Sweet and their two children Persephone and Heracles who live in the Shirley Jackson house in Vermont as their family falls apart. Her storytelling was hypnotic, with beautiful, but stark prose and seemingly never ending sentences snaking through the audience. Even before the reading started, she shared one of the somewhat cryptic but fascinating insights into her writing that littered the evening – she had considered having the family live in the Robert Frost house, but that if this were the case, the novel would have simply fallen apart.
Questions from Scuriatti and a student in the audience prompted the main theme of the evening: the connection between landscape and identity. Kincaid threaded together many stories in response – Swiss villages infected with thyroid issues because of a lack of iodine, George W. Bush’s notoriously Texan walk, how the Rocky mountain range was formed. She spoke fondly of Vermont, and all of its characteristics that have made it a productive place for living and writing. She believes that people, sometimes metaphorically, but often scientifically, embody the mythology of the landscape where they grow. And so, Kincaid is obsessed with learning about geography, and often writes more about her character’s surroundings than about their thoughts. After all, she is a life-long gardener, and a prolific essayist on the subject of gardening.
When the event concluded, the community filled up their wine glasses and snacked on some pretzels, and, mostly, raved about the event. I got the same impression from all of my conversations – what more could one want than a talk as funny, inspirational, thought-provoking, and beautiful as this? So, in closing, here are some of the many pieces of advice Jamaica Kincaid shared with our community:
- Forget plot, as it interferes with the truth. Most ‘great’ novels would be better if they hadn’t spent so much time on the silly concept.
- Some truths are universal, and so you can slap whatever labels you want on them and it will not make a difference.
- If you are interested in writing, take up a hobby. Otherwise, you will have nothing to write about.
- Do whatever you want with punctuation, and ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.
By: April Carlioz ‘27
Originally published in the December 2025 issue of the Bard Wire, the Bard College Berlin student newspaper.
Post Date: 12-15-2025