5th Annual Writing Festival @ Northwestern

A couple weeks ago (April 12-14) the undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University held its 5th Annual Writing Festival, a three-day event bringing together students, faculty and three writers representing each of the three major genres--poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction--in which the program offers major and minor curricular tracks.

This year's visiting writers were poet Kate Daniels (who teaches at Vanderbilt University), creative nonfiction writer Jane Brox, and fiction writer ZZ Packer (teaching this semester at the University of Texas, Austin).  Each individually hosted a master class for the students, gave a reading of their work, and then together participated in a conversation on their lives and work guided by three of my colleagues, Sheila Donohue, Brian Bouldrey, and Rachel Webster. In her master class, Daniels spoke about the "garrulous poem" (which would describe her sinous, talky, information and action-rich poems); Brox in hers talked about transitions both with her specific books and across the span of her writing life; and Packer combined narratology and critical theory with practical reading in her presentation on voice. I was unfamiliar with Brox's nonfiction, so it was enlightening to hear her read and talk about it, and though I had read Daniels' and Packer's work, I felt like I heard and learned something new with their readings and presentations. All the events were packed, which was great to see, and my conversations with students after the event affirmed that they had gotten a great deal from the presentations and the readings. I certainly did, as I have every prior year.

A special highlight this year was the participation of students from Evanston Township High School, the local public high school.  During the month of March, several colleagues and I, led by poetry professors Mary Kinzie, Rachel Webster and Susannah Gottlieb, the force behind the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium, and aided by graduate student and poet Laura Passin, supervised half a dozen outstanding senior undergraduate poetry students, who led the high school students in writing exercises at Evanston Township High School and via online workshops. Mark Onuschek, the English teacher and program coordinator, along with nearly all the high school students who participated in the program and many of their parents were present at the Writing Festival event, and nearly all of the students read one of their poems, as did their undergraduate student mentors. It was wonderful to have writers at this level present and to hear their work in conversation with the established writers.

Here are a few photos from the events (no drawings, unfortunately, as I did last year of David Shields).

Kate Daniels, at her master class

Jane Brox, leading her master class

Rachel Webster, introducing the student writers

Undergraduate poet Jonathan Ayala, and an ETHS student poet (in red)

ZZ Packer, leading her master class

The writers' panel (Donohue, Packer, Brox, Bouldrey, Daniels, Webster)

Two Draft Poems (Spring 2012)

Back in April in several blog posts on the Northwestern University's annual spring Writing Festival, I mentioned my participation in a related program, sponsored by NU's undergraduate Creative Writing Program and the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium, that involved working with the excellent young undergraduate creative writing poetry students, who were in turn serving as mentors and teachers for talented, enthusiastic high school poets at Evanston Township High School, the main public school in the suburban city, just north of Chicago, where Northwestern's main campus sits. 

As part of that program, a half dozen NU faculty members, I included, all affiliated with the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium or the undergraduate Creative Writing program, attended several sessions at the high school, and during those, some of us actually wrote drafts of poems with the students. Yesterday I was reading through my current Moleskin notebook, which I began late last year, and came across my drafts of two poems I wrote based on prompts that my faculty colleagues gave to the high school students. I wrote them while sitting with the undergraduates and high schools, even reading the first aloud to them when they pressed me to hear it, and thought I'd post them here, instead of letting the blog remain in radio silence.

I did not write down and cannot recall the prompts, although I believe that in relation to my first piece, one of the high school students wrote and then later revised a poem about finding money on the street. Perhaps that was the source of the "million dollars." With the second I believe a colleague had the students reading poems by Louise Bogan and Melvin Dixon, and it may have been their prosody and rhyme schemes I was following. At any rate these were a nice reminder of last spring, and are but drafts resulting from prompts, so take them as you will.

PEOPLE SAY

People say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
People say that the cows will eventually come home.
People say that the child will do better than her parents.
People say that the child who has her own is blessed.
People say there are more stars in the heavens than moons.
People say if you hear songs in your dreams you'll win a million dollars.
People say if you hear don't hear songs in your dreams you'll win a million dollars.
People say that a lover's kiss is worth more than a million dollars.
People say you can buy a kiss from anyone you dream of for a million dollars.
People say it's better to give than receive, whether it's one kiss, one dollar or a million.
People give a million reasons why they call you or do not call you.
People say they're telling you the truth when they're giving you these reasons.
People say if you listen to the earth you might hear things you need to hear.
People say if you listen to the earth you might hear things you don't want to hear.
People say that if you play your cards right they could still go very wrong.
People say that if you play your cards wrong things could still turn out alright.
People say there's a right way and a wrong way to hear the things people say.

People say there's a right way and a wrong way to understand the things people say.

People say it's often better not to pay close attention to what people say.

People say it's always a good idea to pay close attention to what people say.

People say if you pay close or even a little attention you can learn a great deal about not just what's being said about but about who is saying it.
People say so many things it's almost impossible to remember them.
People say nevertheless it's a good idea to remember the basics, like the sun rising in the east, et cetera.
People sometimes say these things in such a whisper though, you can't can be sure what people say.

EVANSTON

Gold sun green lawns
black yards white dawn
steel tracks fast trains
station wagons

brick homes stone manors

silver lake bronze sand
wide streets polite manners
snow caps mittened hands

tall poles long wires
school songs home choirs
ascending sparrows
alighting crows

Copyright © John Keene, 2012.

Updates + Congratulations & News

These summer days are zooming by. Although I haven't even been back in New Jersey for a full month, it feels almost or even double that long.  As I mentioned in a post a few weeks back I'd begun to set up my new office, and now it's much further along. I still need to figure out how to get into half of my desk, which appears to be locked from the inside (?), get a few office supplies, and hang more artwork (including a vèvè of La Sirène, who kept watch over my office in Evanston), but things are proceeding pretty well.

The office, now mostly in order

I have several DUPLICATES of books, so I am again putting out a call to find out if any J's Theater readers would like a copy of one of them. If not, I will donate them.

The books are:

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From
Luis Cernuda, Selected Poems (translated by Reginald Gibbons)
Therese Hak Kyung Cha, Dictée
Jason Epstein, The Book Business
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
Thomas Glave, Whose Song? and Other Stories
Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber
Tyehimba Jess, leadbelly
Adrian C. Louis, Bone & Juice
Michael David Lucas, The Oracle of Stamboul (my former undergraduate student!)
Claudia Rankine, Don't Let Me Be Lonely
Adrienne Rich, Diving Into the Wreck
Nathanaël West, Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust (2 copies)

A certain very dear person to me was quite skeptical that Newark has a subway system--it does, called the Newark Light Rail, and comprising the old Newark City Subway and an extended light rail component--so here are a few images of it and the Rutgers University-Newark campus. From Newark's Penn Station to the campus, it's 2 stops, or 70 cents. I was a bit incredulous at first at this price, but yes, it's cheaper to go back and forth to campus on Newark's subway than either one way on the PATH, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail or New York's MTA. The trains are almost identical to the light rail trains that run along the eastern spine of Hudson and Bergen counties, from Bayonne, through Jersey City, to Weehawken. But they do slip underground at first, before ascending to road grade. One line stays in Newark, I believe, and the other runs all the way to Bloomfield. Another line takes you to the now quite famous New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and also to the Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium.

The entrance, at Newark's Penn Station

A mural in the Newark Penn Station stop

One of the trains, barreling the station

The Washington St. station entrance, in University Heights

On campus, looking up the hill, toward New Jersey Institute of Technology

One of the directional signs, along the campus

***

Now, for a few announcements and congratulations. First, to Dr. Laura E. Passin, newly minted Ph.D., who successfully defended her dissertation "The Lyric in the Age of Theory: The Politics and Poetics of Confession in Contemporary Poetry." Smart, brimming with insight, covering a range of noteworthy poets in unexpected combinations, theoretical without ever turning to theory as a crutch, it is a work much like its author, an incredibly sharp and talented poet and budding scholar I've had the good fortune to get to know from the time she passed her oral exams with panache, on through all of her dedicated efforts on behalf of the Poetry and Poetics Colloquium and the poetry workshops the undergraduate students conducted with the students at Evanston Township High School, and it has been a particularly joy to serve on her thesis committee. Congratulations to Laura, now Dr. Passin, who has a great book on poetry with her dissertation, and a great future ahead of her!

Congratulations also to Nathanaël, someone whose work and works in the world never fail to astonish me, who received a PEN American Center Translation Fund Grant, to support her translation of French writer Hervé Guibert's Mausoleum for Lovers. According to the site, this work is "a posthumous collection of the private journals that the well-known novelist and AIDS activist kept from 1976-1991—a series of literary snapshots of the author’s various objects of desire and mourning and already a classic of French autobiography," and will be published by Nightboat Books.  The PEN blog even features a snippet of Nathanaël's translation.  Congratulations again to Nathanaël, and it goes without saying that I am looking forward to her translation of this work and--I'll say more later--another work she has translated, which will appear this fall.

I've been waiting for the starter's gun to sound and permit me to announce the winner of the first Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Northwestern University Poetry and Poetics Colloquium in conjunction with the Northwestern University Press, and she is Kristiana Rae Colón! As a member of the inaugural committee of judges, I can attest to how her book of poems, promised instruments, crackled with spirit and soul, and demonstrated how craft can transform one's life and imagination into powerful, memorable poetry. The press will also publish a companion chapbook, Closest Pronunciation, by poet Ed Roberson, who will be writing the introduction to Kristiana's début, and it too is full of poems which show a poet at the height of his girts rendering everyday experiences into artfully cadenced, pitched lyric. The 2013 chapbook guidelines are open, so if you qualify, please submit your work!

And finally, in the July 20, 2012 New York Daily News, the ever-amazing Kwame Dawes discusses the newly established African Poetry Book Series, an exciting, multi-dimensional program under the auspices of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s African Poetry Book Fund, that will include books to be published beginning in January 2014, and more, and which I have been fortunate to have been involved with since its conception. Some very exciting titles are in the works, and as things develop I'll announce them here, but many thanks to Kwame and to all the other poets, writers, sponsors, as well as Nebraska-Lincoln, for making this happen!

Northwestern's 5th Annual Spring Writers' Festival

This week at Northwestern brings the 5th annual Spring Writers' Festival, featuring poet Kate Daniels, fiction writer ZZ Packer, and creative nonfiction writer Jane Brox. In addition to master classes with the students and private conferences with senior majors, all of the writers will be giving readings over the next few days. Also, the students at Evanston Township Public High School that I mentioned will also be reading in, on Wednesday.  If you're in or near Evanston, please consider attending any of these events. They're free and open to the public!

Tuesday, April 10

5:00 p.m.
A reading by Jane Brox
Hilton Orrington
9th Floor
Hinman Auditorium

Wednesday, April 11

3:00 p.m.
A special presentation of poetry by ETHS students
Hilton Orrington
9th Floor
Hinman Auditorium

5:00 p.m.
A reading by ZZ Packer
Hilton Orrington
9th Floor
Hinman Auditorium

Thursday, April 12

3:30 p.m.
A guided conversation with three authors
led by Brian Bouldrey, Sheila Donohue, and Rachel Webster
Scott Hall
Guild Lounge

5:30 p.m.
A reading by Kate Daniels
Scott Hall
Guild Lounge

This year’s festival authors and events are sponsored by the Department of English Creative Writing Major and the Department of African American Studies.