Lynda Barry joins Chamonix faculty

New addition to Butler's Chamonix Summer Writing ProgramsIn case you’ve missed our coverage of it over the course of the semester, the Butler MFA program has a new summer program that whisks students away to scenic, historic Chamonix, France. For the straight details, you can visit the Chamonix Summer Writing Programs website. Or, for a more personal, narrative take, might I guide you to one of our three Chamonix Memorixs pieces, generously contributed by Jim Hanna, Farhard Anwarzai, and Lisa Renze-Rhodes? Aside from its picturesque vistas, wine and gourmet cheeses, our Chamonix program also boasts a stable of beast writers for 2014. Spanning poetry, prose and non-fiction, our list includes Erin Belieu, Dan Chaon, Michael Dahlie, Terrance Hayes, Ann Hood, and Cheryl Strayed. So you can imagine the great excitement with which we tell you that we’ve added Lynda Barry to our roster. Continue reading

“A poem is a type of prayer…”

Doug Manuel Butler MFA program poetry how i writeThose of you who don’t know poet Doug Manuel must be recent additions to our program, because when he was a student, even if it was in some minute way, he touched damn near everybody. Doug was an almost irreplaceable part of the Writing in the Schools program; when I spoke to the kids last month, they were still quoting him. In his voice. Their impressions were impeccable. Doug was also Managing Editor of Booth, and a big reason why our poetry game stepped it up these past few years. And now he’s enrolled in the Ph.D. creative writing program at the University of Southern California, no doubt entrenched in page upon page of theory and poem alike. Despite this, he was gracious enough to take some time to share with us how he writes. And this is how it goes: Continue reading

Tomaž Šalamun is final visiting writer

salamun-butler-vwsOn Tuesday, November  19, 7:30 PM in the Krannert Room of Clowes Hall, Slovenian avant-garde poet Tomaž Šalamun brings our fall Visiting Writers Series to a close. Author of over 30 books of poetry, translated to over 20 languages, Šalamun published his first book Poker at the tender age of 25. Perhaps more impressive, Šalamun was arrested at the tenderer age of 23, spending a few days in jail over his iconoclastic poem “Duma ’64,” in which he portrayed an important government official as a dead cat. Unsurprisingly, the official took umbrage.

Salamun has won a Pushcart Prize as well as the Jenko Prize and Slovenia’s Prešeren and Mladost Prizes. Now, I could give you more biography, but many moons ago Šalamun was helpful enough to publish autobiographical poem “History” in The Guardian. I haven’t read it, but I’m sure it will be both illuminating as well as mightily accurate. Here goes: Continue reading

Tomaž Šalamun is final visiting writer

salamun-butler-vwsOn Tuesday, November  19, 7:30 PM in the Krannert Room of Clowes Hall, Slovenian avant-garde poet Tomaž Šalamun brings our fall Visiting Writers Series to a close. Author of over 30 books of poetry, translated to over 20 languages, Šalamun published his first book Poker at the tender age of 25. Perhaps more impressive, Šalamun was arrested at the tenderer age of 23, spending a few days in jail over his iconoclastic poem “Duma ’64,” in which he portrayed an important government official as a dead cat. Unsurprisingly, the official took umbrage.

Salamun has won a Pushcart Prize as well as the Jenko Prize and Slovenia’s Prešeren and Mladost Prizes. Now, I could give you more biography, but many moons ago Šalamun was helpful enough to publish autobiographical poem “History” in The Guardian. I haven’t read it, but I’m sure it will be both illuminating as well as mightily accurate. Here goes: Continue reading

MFA grads to support Matt Hart

It has been criminally underreported that MFA program graduates Chris Speckman and Andrew Soliday have been tapped to open up Matt Hart‘s poetry reading at Franklin College tonight, 6:30PM in the Hamilton Auditorium, and it would be a shame if a few Butler students couldn’t make the drive. Between graduation and several Dialogue events, Chris has proven to be a composed, eloquent reader, and his poetry – a late addition to his thesis work – is only getting better. Andrew is an excellent counterpoint; the natural charm of his between-poem interludes is almost as much of a selling point as his fantastic body of work.

matt-hart-butler-mfaMatt Hart himself – y’know, the main event – is pretty good, too. He teaches writing and aesthetics at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and is co-founder and editor of Forklift Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Butcher Shop, The Canary, and Ploughshares, and his first full-length book of poems Who’s Who Vivid is forthcoming from Slope Editions. But perhaps more interestingly, he was lead vocalist for the punk rock band Squirtgun, and draws influence from this in the performance of his poetry. You can sample of his work right here. And hey, here you can listen to him read his poem “Amplifier to Defender.”

MFA outreach program inspires

My first steps into Room 238 find me in a crowd of milling high schoolers, scattershot throughout a repurposed science lab. I had arrived at Shortridge High School before the buses left, and the halls weren’t quite emptied of their stragglers yet, but this room had an entirely different density to it– and an energy. In the middle of the throng was Chris Speckman, professor of  EN 455 and director of the MFA’s Writing in the Schools (WITS) program, clipboard and pen in hand, gradually imparting order upon the chaos. Efficiently sweeping the room and pairing off students with available tutors, he eventually had to pass his duties off to graduate assistant and hype man Luke Wortley, because one of his students had brought two friends.

Reticent friends, unresponsive friends, who wouldn’t make eye contact, who orbited the outer borders of the room, who would not engage, but determined at least to be present. One wore red, the other blue. Chris was patient with them, inviting but firm. They were welcome to stay and write, or they could leave. Corralling them to the back of the room, he sat down with the two personally. Red’s eyes never left the black table top. Blue preferred the walls. Sometimes the two would exchange glances. “Do you know what we do here?” Chris asked.

As I’m sure every person who reads this is aware, writing from nothing, what is essentially pulling words from the ether, it’s tough. And that’s the daily endeavor of Writing in the Schools. There may be prompts, sure, but this was a room full of kids who volunteered to subject themselves to a writing regime some scholars entering MFA programs don’t keep. I remember, as I circulated the room, my curiosity ever-dragging my eyes back to the two boys, Chris asked Red, “What is unique to you that inspires you?”

butler shortridge mfa program wits writing in the schoolsAfter some thought, Red replied, “God inspires me.”

The student pulled out his phone, on which he had composed lines upon lines of raps, religious and highly personal. Within minutes of sitting down with these two formerly-reticent students, he had pens and paper in front of them, had them creating. I looked at each small group of tutor and tutees. The room, which had once been a chaotic torrent of teenage energy, the air thick with a dozen competing voices, now purred with the murmur of productive conversations. I could hear the unmistakable click of pencil tip on table top. This is what we do here.

I had the chance to speak with a few of the regulars of Exclusive Ink (the student-selected name of the after-school creative writing group associated with WITS), kids who have been around for months, years in some cases. The first was Zuri, a decorated poet (having just won the Ethridge Knight Poetry Contest in 2012) and consummate spitfire. Despite her small stature, she wore a large smile and emanated an aura of sharpness. Referred by a friend during the first year of the WITS program, she had first come to Room 238 of her own volition, simply because she enjoyed writing. I asked if she had then referred others, pay-it-forward style, and she proceeded to point out at least six other students around the room.  We talked shop; her favorite poets are Maya Angelou and Edgar Allen Poe. She then went on to try to communicate how surreal it was for her to hear Angelou recite Poe at Clowes Hall earlier that month. Toward the end of our talk, I asked her about winning the prize, asked her how much she felt she had improved: “A ton.” And what was her secret?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SLpylcvl7E&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

“Writing every day.” With encouragement and guidance from Butler tutors, naturally. But still, where do you think so many young writers would be if they had come to that realization – organically, no less – so early on?

butler mfa shortridge wits writing in the schoolsEric was a different story. Reclined in a ratty old chair, he spoke to me intermittently while composing a poem, tapping away at the screen of an iPad. His favorite poet is Tupac. He called MFA alum and former WITS graduate assistant Doug Manuel a “chill Gandhi” type, called his Exclusive Ink colleagues a “big family” and wanted to make sure that I included that the room was full of “beast writers.” (That’s a good thing.) And then he spun his iPad around and asked me to read his unfinished poem. He had taken a single word that day’s exercise had generated, melon, and thirty lines had just blossomed. It was a charged, fiery piece, as melon had transmuted into watermelon, which invoked race, which brought police, which elevated tension, which brought said fire. If we’re talking fruit, his language was just bananas.

“You have a better vocabulary than I do,” I said, returning the iPad. A friend of his jumped into the conversation.

“Whenever he got in trouble, his mom made him read from the dictionary.”

Sometime after that, Eric broke the back right off the chair.

The third student I spoke to was Brandon. He wore a black hoodie, and a circle of twine preserved a piercing in his right ear. He was much more reserved than the others, but no less friendly or forthcoming. His favorite poet is Confucius. Among the three, Brandon was the only one who had not come to Room 238 by choice. While the Butler after-school program was never intended to be punitive, Brandon first attended the program as a means of avoiding suspension. He spoke candidly of his behavior issues with an air of gratitude: “I don’t know why I acting like that, but they knew that wasn’t me.”

His second stint, longer this time, was to bring up a failing English grade. But eventually, when his attendance was no longer mandatory, Brandon continued to come. Regularly, even. Most importantly, he has continued to write. It’s a dangerous and communicable disease, isn’t it? You try your hand at it once and suddenly it sticks with you. My first time writing a story was punitive, I told him. It was AP English– we were watching (and ridiculing) a Jack London performance in a Shakespeare movie. It might’ve been Hamlet? Anyway, our English teacher scolded us, told us that we had no room to poke fun unless we had written something ourselves. That night I went home and wrote my first story. Handed it to him the very next day. From that point on I was cursed forever.

My time at Shortridge concluded with a reading, which I was expecting, and a musical performance that I was not. The writing that the students do is only half of it– after every session they are invited, encouraged, to share what they’ve written. Students are even recorded and filmed, should they wish to extend that sharing outside of Room 238. Dressed head to toe in turquoise, a girl named Jenny shared a romantic short story of a chance encounter at the mall. As we clapped, Red and Blue, along with the friend that brought them, slowly took their place at the front of the room. After a few timing missteps, they broke into song. Red rapping a few verses he wrote just minutes before, Blue on the chorus, harmonizing with their friend, who took care of the beat with a mechanical pencil. It was kind of amazing. This all came about in the last hour and a half, in this room, from the minds and fingers of kids who didn’t even want to be here at first. This performance in front of me, this expression, only came into being because Butler volunteers and undergrad and graduate students enrolled in EN 455 invest their time in Shortridge for a few hours every week.

Before I visited Shortridge, I scanned headlines about programs like WITS – distantly and disinterestedly – all the time. I was a tutor in a Writing Center, but all that did was make me cynical. This program’s different though– a tutor in a writing center is more of a mechanic. The tutors at Shortridge are more… coaches? Is it expected of me to say mentors? Tutoring here isn’t a transaction. It isn’t about fixing. It’s about building relationships, stoking a fire inside someone. Like Eric said, it’s about becoming part of a big family.