Content Tagged ‘creative writing’

This spring, University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Department of Creative Writing hosted visiting writer Nikky Finney, distinguished South Carolinian writer and teacher, whose fourth collection, Head Off & Split, was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for poetry. Before coming to UNCW I didn’t seek out poetry, but since beginning my MFA here last fall, and working as a TA for the Pub Lab, I’ve been inundated with poems. As a fiction writer, one prone to writing concise vignettes and flash fiction, I’m fascinated by the distinction between poetry and prose. I attended Nikky Finney’s public reading on Thursday, April 21, eager to hear her experience with words and form. The Kenan Hall room was packed with faculty, students, and Wilmingtonians, and I found a seat on the floor in the back, where I could only see the poet when a sea of shoulders in front of me shifted just so. But I could hear her speak, and between poems Nikky Finney offered habits that improve her writing, told anecdotes about her family and how they’ve influenced her work, and shared her deep connection to the beach. She spoke with such authority, intimacy, and openness I couldn’t resist scrawling down quotes in my notebook. I left the reading, perhaps just as muddled about the distinction of prose and poems, but armed with two of her books, the desire to get home to my writing desk as quickly as possible, and the intention to connect more deeply with the quiet places Wilmington offers writers. I’m excited to share her words and ideas that have already begun to nourish me, with our readers.
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1) “You have to go to the word, go to the root, go to the definition.”

2) “That’s your job: you have to pay attention. Poems are walking by every day. You gotta pay attention.”

3) “If you do what you’ve already done, you’re gonna get what you’ve already gotten.” (advice Nikky Finney shared from her grandmother)

4) Keep an epigraph journal.

5) Talk about hard things in a loving way.

6) “Take the opportunity, so you don’t live with the regret.”

7) “You know, we live in a really noisy world.” Do something for yourself that is aware of how noisy the world is. “You have to figure out the noise in your life and then shut it down, it’s not helpful to you.”

8) “I listen to what makes my heart flutter.”

9) Face the thing you really need to be looking at.

10) “Reporting is the reporter’s job, but my job, my student’s job, your job, is to make something of what you know about humanity. Because that is why we’ve had art for thousands of years. To make us better…to have the kind of conversations we are having.”

–F. Morgan Davis, MFA Candidate in fiction, Pub Lab TA

Best of luck to our MFA students as they raise money for travel and outreach programs! Check out *Share the Word and help them reach their goal.

On a Friday afternoon last April, I stood in the back of a classroom and watched John Rybicki, author of Lookout’s first poetry collection, When All the World Is Old, pace in front of a group of middle schoolers. John wore a short-sleeved blue shirt that showed off his wiry, muscled forearms, and he could barely stand still as he addressed the class. He would hold his arms above his head or spread them like wings; sometimes he’d step in close to talk to the kids, other times he’d lean way back to convey the scope of some grand bit of wisdom.

“On the page,” he told the kids, “where anything is possible, I’m a different kind of animal. And I want to cultivate in you, after your parents have been protecting you, trying to put a protective coat of their own skin around you, a sense of lawlessness and danger and emotional jeopardy. And when it happens on that canvas in front of you, you become godlike in your scope. A drop of God’s fire fell from the heavens and lodged in each of us.”

I remember being bored to tears by most of the special visitors I saw in middle school. But I also remember those visitors who just electrified me—the ones who approached us on our level, who talked to us like peers, who had more energy than you usually find in a classroom. Seeing those students sitting straight up at their desks, their eyes alight, I knew John was one of those visitors for them, one they’d remember for a long time.

A powerful silence graced the room as Rybicki weaved through anecdotes of time spent with his wife and passages from his books. As he finished, most felt not a deafening sense of sorrow but rather a promised notion of his fortitude in overcoming a grave loss.

“He makes his poems out of true feeling — he lives his poetry,” said creative writing professor Robert Fanning, who introduced Rybicki to an audience of more than 100. “He’s doing things that are so far beyond what we can do in our best hour with our sharpest pen.”

This excellent article was published by CMU’s student-run publication, Grand Central Magazine. Read onward (more photos included).

ecotonejournal:

Regina is a 3rd-year poet in the MFA program at UNCW. We love her and we knew you would too, so we asked her a few questions so y’all could get to know her:

Favorite author, book, journal? What do you like? “Although I am a poet by trade, I find Paul Auster and Milan Kundera very inspiring. I also cannot wait to order the newest from Zadie Smith and Junot Diaz. As for poetry, I try to read the newest chapbooks I can find— I’m interested in exploring the current moment in poetry, however experimental or traditional, and always considering if a new voice would be a good fit for Ecotone. Also, let’s face it, I read an embarrassing amount of celebrity gossip”

Hit us with a place-based factoid/story about yourself: “I never thought I would live within walking distance of a Hooters. Sigh.”

Your favorite thing Ecotone ever published? “Mary Reufle’s three poems in the Remembrance issue were dynamite. Also, I really enjoyed Peter LaSalle’s short story ‘Tell Me About Nerval’ in the Happiness issue.”

Something random? “I sometimes have fantasies about breaking into other people’s houses and cleaning them.”

 

 

And that, dear readers, is Regina in 4 questions and a picture!

Want to meet the rest of our staff?

Stay tuned!

Great post from our favorites, Ecotone Journal!

It’s here! It’s here! Fantastic book trailer for John Rybicki’s When All The World Is Old.

Made by UNCW students and our dedicated Lookout Interns. Great work all!

– John Mortara, Lookout Intern