Writing and Publications

Jack Chelgren ’15 Visits the Espwesso Poetry Reading

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Jack Chelgren ’15 attends a poetry reading held at Espwesso, and reflects on their work.

Last Thursday night, thirty or so people piled into Espwesso for a cozy and thoughtful program of student poetry.  Chairs and tables were cleared from the far corner of the room, where a shiny 1950s-style microphone now stood in their place, hooked up to a Fender guitar amp.  The mic teetered precariously on the end of its stand, and every time someone got up to read and adjusted it, the whole room watched in apprehension, waiting to see if it would fall.  (It did.)

The focus of the evening meandered from social and literary commentary to fantastical misadventures and questions of sexuality, love, and identity, a smorgasbord of topics that somehow seemed all in keeping with one another.  Robby Hardesty ’12, first on the roster, read a poem dedicated to his sister, set in a pitch-perfect tone of mock heroism (“To die!  O!  What?” he exclaimed to a tittering audience).  Alek Barkats ’12 rattled off a handful of quirky haikus before launching into a pair of ribald longer poems, one dedicated to his friend on his twenty-second birthday, the other a hilariously sardonic account of a man who has sex with dolphins.  Claire Dougherty ’13 wove a litany of strange, detached images into elegantly prosodic lines reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, while Betsy Sallee ’13, who teamed up with Dougherty to read a poem they cowrote, favored more violent, corporeal language.  Sallee lashed out graphically with lines like, “It is for you that I shave my prickle p*ssy and commit an ambien homicide.”  In another one of her poems, the speaker walks in on a girl she’d gone to elementary school with filming a porn sequence.

Peter Myers ’13 followed up in completely different vein, prefacing one of his poems: “This is a Wikipedia page: ‘List of fatal wolf attacks.’”  There is indeed such a page, and Myers seemed at first to be reading from it verbatim, bringing to mind the work of conceptual poets like Kenneth Goldsmith.  It soon became clear, however, that he was making at least some of it up—in recounting one supposed incident, he paraphrased the opening lines of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”; in another, he cited the victim as “John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”  Emily Brown ’12 read her set of poems twice, first somewhat timidly, then again with more force, delivering pithy, somatic reflections on sex and relationships.  Josh Krugman ’14, who followed her, read in a strange, theatrical voice like that of a bad Shakespeare actor, but the effect was amusing when coupled with the hallucinatory content of his work, lines like, “Just call me porcupine.”  He interrupted himself to inform us that he had just quoted Tennessee Williams, and took a deep, histrionic bow when he finished.  Leia Zidel ’12 read prose poems from her senior thesis, as well as one she had written just the day before, which seemed addressed or otherwise related to James Joyce.  Whereas Sallee was brutal and Brown almost tender with regards to sex, Zidel spoke of it lushly, in verdurous, organic terms: “I have shut my thighs, and still the terrible sap.”  Last in the lineup was Glenn Stowell ’13, whose work exuded a Whitman-esque regard for nature, evoking both a sense of motion and a kind of terrain or topography (which is fitting given that one of his poems was actually titled “Topography”).

What stood out most to me about the reading was just how well each of these poets was able to balance personal expression and earnestness with novelty and experimentation.  The poetic community at Wesleyan can often feel divided between the popular, galvanizing fare of WeSLAM and the rarified, hole-and-corner exploits of an unappreciated avant-garde.  But while such a polarity exists, Thursday night’s reading was a testament to the fact that between these two extremes lies a whole spectrum of work that doesn’t conform to either one.  A diversity of tastes doesn’t necessarily imply a division, but can in fact, as I saw on Thursday, be indicative of just the opposite: a community of individuals united by the common purpose of creating good work.

Emily Brown ’12, Claire Dougherty ’13, Josh Krugman ’13, and Glenn Stowell ’13 are this year’s Wesleyan Student Poets; their selected work has been published in a collection which is available around campus.  For information about upcoming events at Espwesso, like their page on Facebook.

Apply to tell your story as part of “RISK!” on Friday February 10

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Do you have uncensored stories that you share with your good friends, that you want to try sharing on stage?

RISK!

“RISK!”, the live show where people tell true stories “they never thought they’d dare to share in public,” is coming to Crowell Concert Hall for two performances (7pm and 10pm) on Friday February 10, co-sponsored Desperate Measures Improv(e) Comedy and the Center for the Arts and featuring San Francisco-based comedian W. Kamau Bell (Comedy Central).

“RISK!” is looking for a total of 8 storytellers – 4 Wesleyan students, and 4 Wesleyan community members (i.e. faculty, staff, etc. ) – to be a part of these shows!

There will also be an audio podcast created of the performances. The stories are usually 8 to 10 minutes long, zero in on one incident (or series of incidents), and have a beginning and end. They can even be tragic, rather than funny.

Here’s two episodes so you can hear how it works!
Because we’re producing a podcast, “RISK!” creator Kevin Allison (from MTV’s “The State”) will need to see a pitch of your story to consider how it might fit into the show at Wesleyan. Your pitch should be somewhere between 100 and 250 words long. It should include how the story ends, and ideally it should cover these five points:

1) SET THE SCENE – Where were you in life when this began?

2) WHAT GOT THE BALL ROLLING – What incident made taking action necessary?

3) WHAT WAS AT STAKE – What hope or fear drove you? What did you stand to gain or lose?

4) HOW I TURNED THE CORNER – What finally changed this situation, for better or worse?

5) WHAT’S RISKY ABOUT THIS –  Why do you feel it’s daring to be sharing this?

Kevin will let us know if he is interested in hearing more about your story.

The theme for the stories at Wesleyan is “Discovery.” So, these might be stories where a person tried something they didn’t think they’d like, but did. Or when someone didn’t think they had it in them to succeed, but they did. Or when someone was confident they were on the right track, but life gave them a surprise they learned from.

Send your pitches to kevin@risk-show.com
W. Kamau Bell

If you have any other questions, write to Carrie Cohen ’12  ccohen@wesleyan.edu

And you can watch videos of W. Kamau Bell at http://www.wkamaubell.com

 “[RISK! is] jaw-dropping, hysterically funny, and just plain touching.”

–Slate.com

 

“W. Kamau Bell is ferociously funny!”

–Robin Williams

 

“W. Kamau Bell is the most important guy doing comedy right now. Do yourself a favor and go see him. He’s got the most astute, hilarious and completely righteous material going and he’s going to be a legend in his own lifetime like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce. Think Bill Hicks but slightly taller.”
–Margaret Cho

 

“W. Kamau Bell is in the vanguard of a new era of American comedy for an unsettling, troubling, and strangely hopeful time. Firmly in the fearless tradition of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Chris Rock. Comedy as common sense purged of the absurd hypocrisy that is Our America.”
–Vernon Reid of the Grammy Award-winning band Living Colour

Nate Dolton-Thornton ’15 wins Freshman Writing Contest

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“I consider myself a writer in the same sense I consider myself a woodworker: I think it’s a wonderful craft that I would be incredibly content dedicating my life to, but as of right now I wouldn’t hire me out to make your table.”

Nate Dolton-Thornton ’15 sent us an engaging and eye-opening editorial about the other energy crisis: our unsustainable food production system. His contest-winning piece troubles the relevance of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway in the face of the more immediate needs of the masses and provides well-researched alternatives to current, inefficient agricultural techniques that rely too heavily on fertilizers and pesticides.

“While a few powerful world players have realized the potential magnitude of the impending catastrophe if our current unsustainable food systems continue,” Nate writes,  “their reactions seem to be based more on ensuring their own safety in light of coming calamities than on avoiding them. If any truly significant changes are to be made to actually negate this calamity, they must be made at a grassroots level, and they must be made soon.”

The hardest part about writing this piece, Nate told us, was making it controversial enough.  He initially envisioned it as a response to these issues in the form of fiction, but decided that hard facts would be preferable, in this case, to a more conceptual argument.  With the help of his writing mentor, Nate developed nuance in the editorial while retaining a strong argument for making responsible food choices and joining in the effort to promote organic farming.

Nate admires the science-fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin for “the clarity and elegance of her prose, the philosophical and imaginative content of her stories, and her attitude towards writing.” He is also a fan of the storytelling techniques of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Borge, and enjoys reading the works of Astrid Lindgren, E.B. White, Kenneth Grahame, A.A. Milne, most of C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

We’re looking forward to reading more works by the fabulous freshmen writers who have joined us on campus this year.  Nate’s advice to members of the class of ’15: Write, edit, write, and get a writing mentor!

Submit your art to Swerved by October 26

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Swerved is an online communal database of Wesleyan creativity, and starting this November 7 they will be hosting an exhibition at the Zilkha Gallery. Students are encouraged to submit any kind of art for the show. All forms of creativity are welcome, such as video and sound, 2D/3D art, photography, prose and poetry. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday October 26. You can enter by submitting your work to the Swerved website, at which point it will be automatically considered for entry.

To submit, email your work to hello@swerved.org or to emailSWERVED@gmail.com. They ask that submissions be under 10MB and that your include your name, class year, the dimensions of the piece, the title and the medium. Submitters whose work is chosen will be informed by email, and a hard copy will be requested for display.

 

Creative Campus at the Student Activities Fair

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Want to know what arts events are happening on campus? Are you involved in arts events and want to get the word out about them? Are you creative and want an outlet for that awesome expression? Or maybe you want to offer up your fresh take on what’s happening on this very creative campus.

This past spring, the Creative Campus website started in conjunction with the Center for the Arts. It was created collaboratively with Wesleyan students, artists, and staff. It is intended for anyone who wants to know what is going on with creative life on this vibrant and inspirational campus. It is a way of aggregating and collecting the creative life on campus, across disciplines, passions, departments, and student groups.

And speaking of student groups, Creative Campus will have a table at the Student Activities Fair! Come check us out to find out how you can get involved, to promote your student group through Creative Campus, or just to say hi. Hope to see you there!

Request for Proposals: Student Commission 2011-2012

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The Center for the Arts is accepting proposals from Wesleyan students for the creation of a visual art work/performance connected to the Feet to the Fire: Fueling the Future theme. The proposal should consist of a project idea and timetable for a project to be created and executed by the end of each semester. One project will be awarded each semester. The Wesleyan University Creative Campus Committee will evaluate the proposals and the selection process will be based on the creativity of the submission, the connection to the Feet to the Fire theme, evidence of cross-disciplinary thinking and the feasibility of the project. Selectees will be awarded up to $250. The Center for the Arts will provide assistance in the realization of the selected projects.

Proposals should include:

  • 1-2 page written description
  • Timetable
  • Visual work should also include a visual representation of the proposed project such as a photograph or sketch (jpeg or pdf preferred)

Proposals for the fall semester are due by midnight on September 25, 2011.

Submit proposals to Program Manager Erinn Roos-Brown by email to eroosbrown@wesleyan.edu or delivered to the Center for the Arts office (located above Zilkha Gallery).

Freshman Writing Contest: First Year Matters – Fueling the Future

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To all writing-enthusiasts in the Class of 2015: the Wesleyan Writing Workshop wants to hear from you – they are eager to shine a spotlight on the talented writers of this year’s freshman class! If you are interested in the Writing Certificate, write frequently in your spare time, are hoping to break into a writing-intensive field or simply want to prove yourself as a promising writer at Wesleyan, please submit your work to the Freshman Writing Contest.

Your challenge is to respond creatively or critically in roughly 1,000 words to some aspect of this year’s First Year Matters theme, fueling the future. In your entry, make sure to respond to at least one of the FYM readings, citing where appropriate. If your reference is not explicit (for instance, if you chose to write a creative piece about a future America completely overpowered by nuclear plants), note which article(s) you are responding to in a footnote.

Consider the following questions as you begin to formulate your response:

  • How do you define “American power”?
  • What can we – as students, artists, scientists, poets, journalists, activists, etc. – do about “fueling the future”?
  • What must we do to ensure our future is sufficiently “fueled”? With so many different problems in need of solutions, where do we even begin?
  • Where should we draw the line between idealism and practicality when seeking solutions for these problems?
  • How is your daily life impacted by energy politics?
  • How can art be an effective medium for discussing broader political issues?
  • Check out Mitch Epstein’s website, www.whatisamericanpower.com, for ideas and inspiration. Which featured definitions of “American power” do you agree with? Disagree with? Do any of the pictures strike a chord with you?

The Wesleyan Writing Workshop will accept all types of submissions: opinion pieces, research papers, investigative journalism, short stories, the sky’s the limit! They will limit submissions to one entry per student. The winning entries will receive a twenty dollar Amazon.com gift certificate and be published on the Wesleyan Writing Blog. This is a fantastic opportunity to establish yourself as one of the most promising writers of your class.

Please send your submission in an email attachment to writingworks@wesleyan.edu by noon on Saturday, September 24. To complete your submission, you must also fill out the Contest Submission Sheet which you can find on the sidebar of the Wesleyan Writing Blog.

For additional information, please contact this year’s Ford Fellows Anya Backlund and Katherine Mechling at writingworks@wesleyan.edu.

Summer in the City

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Shira Engel ‘14 checks in from New York City.

So where do Wesleyan students go once school lets out? To Kenya to work at Shining Hope for Communities? To New Orleans to research the Gulf Coast oil spill? To work at their summer camps? To Russia/the South of France/Sweden? Yes, Wesleyan students will go to all of those places this summer, but first, they go to New York City, the home of a plethora of students and the future home of many more.

This summer, as I return home to the city, I find myself reuniting with friends from school. Last week, Emily Klein ’14 and I went to explore the latest installment of the High Line, which goes from West 20th to West 30th Streets. Originally constructed in the 1930’s for the elevation of freight trains, it was resurrected in 2009 with the opening of Section 1, which goes from Gansevoort to West 20th Street. It is an elevated park that features public art and an aerial view of the city.

The High Line is known as one of the rare places where New Yorkers go to do nothing. For two Wesleyan students, it is the equivalent of Foss Hill during finals week, an oasis in the midst of chaos. And it even looks like a campus in the sky, green and fresh plants balancing out the concrete we walk on. As we crossed the newest section of the High Line, we talked about the year to come and how we didn’t know why, but the experience of how being in the relaxation epicenter of New York reminded us of being at Wesleyan, surrounded by interesting people who spend their time in some of the most creative ways possible. What a great segue from a first year on campus to a summer in the city!

Abigail Horton ’11 on Gulf Coast Experience

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Abigail Horton ’11, Wesleyan Summer Session Teaching Assistant, describes her experiences in Louisiana.

The students will present an open rehearsal of their works in progress, which have developed out of their research in the Gulf, on Friday, July 1, 2011, from 1pm to 3pm in Woodhead Lounge (Exley Science Center).

Samuel Sontag '14 and Eli Timm '13
Samuel Sontag '14 and Eli Timm '13

Seven students of the class The Deepwater Horizon Tragedy: A Scientific and Artistic Inquiry traveled to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana to explore the Deepwater Horizon oil spill almost a year after the spill occurred. The class was structured as an investigation – a scientific, artistic, and human investigation into Louisiana’s relationship with the oil industry, how it led up to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, and how the people of Louisiana deal with it a year after.

The students interviewed over twenty people who were involved with the oil spill: An oysterman whose ninety-year-old family business was wiped out by the governor’s actions during the oil spill. A woman who would abandon her beloved Louisiana in order to save it. One biologist who concludes that we have turned the page since the spill, and a different biologist whose experiments conclude that there are lasting effects from the oil spill. The politician who dealt directly with President Obama during the spill. The first female oilrig worker in Louisiana, and many more passionate, interesting and conflicting voices of the story that is Louisiana, the oil industry, and the oil spill.

The class explored the southern-most rural areas of Louisiana and went to the coastline that was first affected by the spill. We talked to professors and experts at Nicholls State College and Louisiana State University. In boats, the students went out to the wetlands where oil is still caked on the coastal sands, witnessing first-hand the power of the substance to destroy land. Out in the Gulf, we saw the clean-up crews still slowly working to clean the wetlands. The class got into the Gulf and helped professors from the University of New Orleans troll for shrimp and fish to take data on the ecosystem. The class explored New Orleans, and enjoyed the Gulf seafood that Louisianans are so passionate about. Through all of out explorations, we learned how deeply embedded the oil industry is with Louisiana’s history and culture and the complexity of the story.

Perhaps one of the most powerful moments for the class was when we met with a New Orleans-based artist and activist.  Her art has examined the environment, the oil spill, and how nature is trying to recover. She looks at the fragility of the landscape and humans’ role in shaping that. She told the students, “make art about what pisses you off and what blisses you out.” This artist demonstrated to the students how powerfully art can communicate the environmental issues taking place along the Gulf coast, exactly what this class is striving for.

As the teaching assistant for this course, I was able to watch the students delve into this subject with curiosity and sensitivity. As the trip went on, the students became more involved and invested and came to understand the intricacies of the science, human, and political sides of the story. It was an incredible experience for all involved and it is clear to me the students’ dedication to telling the story of the oil spill with accuracy and thoughtfulness.