Arts Institute Blog

  It’s that time of year again: school is looming on the horizon, temperatures are rising, and it’s raining every day. All of this means that it’s time for me to commit myself to sending out my poetry to journals. One of the biggest issues with sending out poems is that I never feel like they are ready to go. Stay home little poem, you’re not ready for the real world yet! But in the name of practicality, they’ll never be ready. Ever. Art is so fluid that it always evolves, and the best we can do is to capture it at some stage of it’s progression. Think of it like a photograph of a basketball player about to shoot the ball. The ball is frozen in his (or her) hands eternally, and for anyone who didn’t see the entire game, the photograph is their connection to the game–the game doesn’t exist outside of the photograph. For anyone who did see the game, they know that the ball left his (her) hands for the rim and may have gone in–the photo was just a moment of the game.

It’s not really something we think about as artists, I don’t believe, that our works will never be perfected or completed. But it reminds me of a conversation I had with Li-Young Lee when he was in Columbia for Asian Arts Week. I had written poems in response to a few poems from his first book, Rose, and I made a point of letting him know the titles of some of the poems I used. “How did they go again?” he responded, and I recited the bits that I could remember. He got this big grin on his face and started to chuckle, and before I could ask what happened, he says “That poem has changed since then, most of them have.” Even though the book was widely published and adored, even perfected (according to some), they had to change because he had changed, and because time had passed.

I’ve had the opportunity over the last few months to work with youths in the arts, specifically in the writing of poetry. I really had no idea what to expect: would they enjoy it? Hate it? Think we’re boring? To my surprise, they loved it. Even if they didn’t complete the tasks exactly how I’d envisioned them (for example, haikus were premdominantly three paragraphs instead of three lines), I think that the children really do benefit from having a creative outlet and being asked to think outside of the traditional math and sciences mindframe.

 My first experience with poetry came in elementary school as a one-off exercise–just write a poem. It was in my language arts class, I believe, and it was an exercise that I simply did not do. Who writes poems? Pffftttt was part of my response, while my other response was How the heck do I do that? And soon after my non-completion of the exercise, the writing of poetry in my life slipped into oblivion until my second year of college. Literally, throughout my 12 years of pre-college education, I was asked to write poetry once. And hated it. And when it came back again in college, it was something that I was ready to embrace and fully appreciate.

 While this may all seem like just a rant at this point, it isn’t. I had never been asked to be creative in a way that I could use, and it’s something that I wish would have been different. We never know in what subject a child may blossom, and the best thing that we can do is expose them to everything–including the writing of poetry and fiction–early enough, and let them choose what they enjoy enough to stick with.

The deadline for the SC Poetry Initiative’s poetry book contest passed earlier this week.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the first book contest, because I won only a year ago, and my book will be out very soon, scheduled to be published on March 15.  Most poets nowadays get their first book published through a contest, and we’re lucky to have something like this here in South Carolina.  I got a copy of the uncorrected page proofs on Tuesday–the day of this year’s deadline– and what a thrill!  A brief moment of panic, before someone from USC press reassured me that those were “uncorrected” page proofs, and all the edits I’d submitted would, indeed, be in the book as published.  And then I was giddy all day paging through it.  There’s a painting by Mike Williams on the cover– he’s a Southern painter whose work I really admire, and I’m so thrilled to have his work on the cover.  And it’s just so beautiful!  The press sent me a copy of the cover on Wednesday, and I was giddy all over again with the beauty of it.  Ray McManus told me when he got his first copy of his book (he was the previous winner), he wanted to go to bed with  it, till his wife told him that was sick.  Two more weeks and I’ll see mine! 

I’m new to these pages, so before I start posting, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself.  I’m Ed Madden, an associate professor of English, and I’m joining these pages as a writer.  I’m excited to join Joe and Blake here, and to add a literary voice to this site.  My first book of poetry, Signals, will be published this spring.  I also direct a writing workshop called the First Book Project, where writers from USC and the community get together to work on first manuscripts.  I’ll be writing about my experiences in this process of getting a first book published.

I’ll also be writing about some of the community writing workshops I work with as part of the Split P Soup creative writing program.  Founded by Ray McManus, Split P Soup connects USC writers with school and community workshop opportunities.  I’ve been working with the Palmetto Center for the Arts (PCA) at Richland Northeast High School this year, and Split P folks have a number of one-time events throughout the year.  The photo above (taken by Chris Broadbent from the English Department) is from a Split P event in January, when a number of us directed writing workshops for middle school students in the CHAMPS program at Eastminster Presbyterian Church on Trenholm Road.  It was a lot of fun—I’ll try to remember to write sometime about the “what the motorcycle said” poem and the fantastic “secret” poems they wrote (like “I want to be a vampire to suck the sweet honey blood of Beyoncé” or “on Fridays I turn into a butterfly, which is awkward because I am a boy”). 

More immediately, I’ll be posting some thoughts on ekphrastic poetry, or poems about visual art.  I’m intrigued by Blake’s questions about time and visual art, questions that resonate with my own thinking about ekphrasis.  Looking forward to this!