A conversation with a poet whose home burned to the ground – Yale Climate Connections

In a new collection of poetry, Open Zero, Pakistani-American poet Sophia Naz explores her grief over the loss of her Glen Ellen, California, home.

In 2017, dangerous wildfires raged across California, burning forests, businesses, and houses, including the one where Naz lived with her husband and son.

Yale Climate Connections talked with Naz about how she uses poetry to process her personal tragedy and to reflect on the consequences of climate change.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Yale Climate Connections: Tell me a little bit about your home.

Sophia Naz: Glen Ellen is a tiny little village. Its nestled in the beautiful valley called the Valley of the Moon. Its also part of the wine country of California. And we fell in love with this house because it was kind of a tree house. All the trees were growing all around it, and some of them were growing through its decks, so we were attracted to it. And so we bought this place in 2010 and then in 2017 is when the wildfires struck.

YCC: Can you tell me what happened when the fires came through?

Naz: I usually work at night, and I had built a little office cabin across from the main house where I was sitting and working. And around 10 oclock at night, when I opened the sliding glass doors, there was a very strong smell of smoke in the air. But I couldnt see any smoke. And I checked my phone to see whats going on, but there was no alert. Sometimes there are wildfires, but theyre far away, and the smoke comes from far away. So in the absence of an alert, I didnt know what to do, so I didnt do anything. I went to bed, but I couldnt really sleep, felt a bit restless.

And then around 2 oclock in the morning, the fire truck came up our lane with the megaphone saying, The fires coming at your home, and you need to leave. You need to evacuate right now. So I woke up our son, whos 14. And then we piled into the car and we left, and that was the last time I saw my home.

YCC: When you went back, was there anything left?

Naz: No, not of the house. I work as a healer. I work in traditional medicine from India. So we had renovated our old barn into a wellness center. So that was untouched by the fire. And we had a yurt on the lower part of our property. That had not been burned. And the swimming pool was there. But that was all that was left.

We did decide to, out of sheer necessity because our workplace was not burnt, to move back. And we bought a trailer. And living in the destroyed landscape was really instructive as well. Because then you realize that its not just your home thats been destroyed, its the home of all the living beings. The loss of one life form ripples out and destroys the habitat of all the other life forms.

Left: Nazs home in Glen Ellen, California, before it was destroyed in a 2017 wildfire. Right: The aftermath. (Photos: Courtesy of Sophia Naz)

YCC: Did what you were seeing around you after you moved back begin to work its way into your poetry?

Naz: Absolutely. One part of my book Open Zero is about the everyday ground realities of loss, the changed landscape the burned redwoods, the destroyed manzanitas, all of the ecology that has been so devastated. And in a way, Open Zero, part of it refers to Im living on ground zero of the loss.

YCC: Can you talk about the emotions you began wrestling with after the fire?

Naz: The immediate emotion that one feels is grief, and then the grief gives way to the feeling of loss. And those two are not exactly the same things, because grief is an immediate emotion, and loss a larger perception.

So losing my home to the wildfires, it crystallized the linkages between topics that I had written about previously as separate things like geography, history, politics, migration, racism, feminism, power structures. When you lose your home, it gives you this immediacy, an urgency, and it broadens your perspective.

These things are inextricably linked, because without the colonization of North America, and without the view of the Earth as simply a resource to be plundered and then the idea that you simply needed to remove the obstacles to that plundering, that is, the Native inhabitants without this world view, and without the enormous wealth that white settler colonialism accumulated, you wont have the current dispensation, right? So all of these things are inextricably linked.

YCC: Was writing Open Zero cathartic?

Naz: Of course. Writing is an absolute cathartic process. [Another writer] has said that writing is a way to avenge the loss. Because there are many ways in which one can avenge loss. Some people do it by singing, some people do it by painting. But if youre a writer, one of the most potent means of doing it is through writing, because it is through writing that one can recreate, as if conjuring out of thin air, a landscape that no longer exists. Because it does exist in your mind. And you can bring what exists in your mind, in your memory, and you can put it down on paper and resurrect it again in a way.

Listen: Poet Sophia Naz grieves after a wildfire took her home

YCC: Its been a few years since the fire. Has the landscape recovered?

Naz: In my home, there were 32 large trees. Im talking trees that were over 100 years old. This is not something that can be replaced and certainly will not be replaced in my lifetime. And that is just the devastating truth about climate change, the climate crisis. Behind me, as I speak, is a hillock or mound of earth where my previous house stood. The earth was rendered too unstable to build where it was built before. So we built slightly below it. So as a result, I see this pile of earth, rubble, every day. Theres a few scattered pieces of scrub growing on it, but its a perverse kind of thing. Its only partially covered by the scrub and a few grasses, but it stubbornly remains as a reminder of everything that has gone.

YCC: And knowing that youre still in the midst of this drought, and that climate change is only likely to bring more severe droughts and fires, you still made the choice to stay there. What is it like living there now?

Naz: Honestly, I dont know how long I will be able to sustain this choice, because it is getting more and more worrisome by the day, really. For now, were here and I do love being here, even though its traumatic.

Weve evacuated twice since the initial fire, and its been absolutely terrifying. There is definitely PTSD in in my life at the moment. And honestly, I do think about moving away, because Im not sure that Ill be able to sustain it literally, physically, and psychologically. It continues to take a toll on me, because every time theres a fire alarm, you can imagine what happens to my heartbeat. Its a palpable reality.

It would be a very strange thing to say that loss is a gift. But I think the gift is the realization that every day of your life is enormously precious. And in a way, its all that you have. All that you will ever know is right this minute. And as a poet, that is an enormous gift, because it changes the way that you view everything around you, and your own being, and all your relationships with the environment, with people.

YCC: Is there a poem from your book that youd be willing to share?

Naz: This poem is called After, Math.

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A conversation with a poet whose home burned to the ground - Yale Climate Connections