Hey, you're listening to Outside In, I'm Nate Hedgy. Right now, it is the middle of the summer.

Where I am in Montana, this is the best time of the year.

Hot, clear skies, rivers are flowing, but down in the south, in Mississippi, summer is a whole

another story.

It is sweltering, oppressive, which is why poet Amy Nizuka Matatil is so excited for the state's annual watermelon carnival.

That comes in August when the entire South

is that it's the hottest, you know, most human part

and then when you get that first chilled slice of watermelon, there's just that is summer.

For Amy, food isn't just calories. In every bite, there's a story. Take that watermelon slice. It helped get the small town of Water Valley, Mississippi out of the Great Depression.

It started the watermelon carnival way back in 1931 after the local bank had failed

and the railroad had skipped town. Nowadays, upwards of 20,000 people go to the

carnival every year because what brings more people together and in different ways

than food in a world that wants us to be fast and get food instantly I think

people are are longing for that moment in time when like, oh, look what we could do with our kitchen

garden, look what we could do with the bounty shared to us from neighbors.

Today on the show,

today on the show,

today on the show, a conversation with poet and author Amy Nizuka Tato. Her work has a way of

re-injecting wonder into the things in nature we often take for granted, the intricate tail of a peacock, or the sounds of insects

that inhabit her garden.

In her new collection of essays, bite by bite, nourishments and jamborees.

She's directed that infectious curiosity towards food.

...