14 | March/April 2017
L I V I N G
Art & Light & Space
STORY BY ERIN PESUT PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAT THEW WONDERLY
I
n the 1970s, as a graduate writing student at Columbia University in New York City, Pamolu Oldham
felt dwarfed by the city. "I felt so diminished by just the tallness of the buildings and the activity that
never stopped." is same feeling pervaded her work—so much so that her writing compacted. "I
wrote small haiku-esque poems." But a trip back home to the South, to a place which felt familiar ("the
southern way of talking, of walking"), helped crack what needed to be cracked. Easily, she tapped into the real
connections around her—people, landscape, specific objects—and her writing grew expansive.
