As 4:30 approached on Thursday, February 23, people began to trickle into the quiet of the Chu Room. Students greeted professors as they arranged themselves in the empty rows of chairs in preparation for the event: a poetry reading by the five students selected for the 2011-2012 Connecticut Poetry Circuit.
Five students are selected for the Connecticut Poetry Circuit from all of the participating colleges and universities in Connecticut — each school can nominate one person — to travel to various schools in the state and give readings, according to Andrea Amulic ’12, the student selected from Conn. Each school’s nominee is asked to submit five pages of poetry, along with a letter of support from the nominating faculty member, to be judged by a panel of poets and professors.
The five poets who were selected each exhibited various styles of writing that ranged from the use of a conceit throughout the poem, or a simple verse that evoked dramatic imagery of everything from a dog lost in its own home to the arching walls of the Coliseum. Before each reading, the poet was introduced by one of their fellow honorees. Each spoke of their peers with a great deal of esteem and respect for the others’ work.
The first to read was Leslie Ahlstrand, a senior at Trinity College. The inspiration for much of her poetry was memory or feeling; she then found a way to move away from the specificity of that memory to something that was not tethered to it completely. The six poems she selected were titled “Small Talk,” “Sublet,” “Flash,” “Architecture,” “Soundcheck” and “Composition.” Each was a word or phrase that spoke to the original inspirational memory, and still managed to speak to the divergences of the word. The poem “Flash” centered specifically on our society’s need to associate a photo with a memory so it doesn’t get lost. “Soundcheck” was about the specific memory of growing up around her father, a musician, as he set up his performance spaces in bars. The link to music that was developed, along with the advice her father gave both her and his music students offered some of the most important influences to her philosophy on writing: “You can only play or write what you know. So experience everything.”
The next reader was Jared Coffin, a senior at Southern Connecticut State University. His poems spanned a wide range of topics and issues, many of them linked to memory as well. Perhaps what defined his writing the most was his use of metaphor to describe greater concepts. In his poem “Come Quick,” he explored the role of the reader. Coffin read three other poems: “My Father’s Chest,” “Hollandia,” a poem about the stories his grandfather told him from serving in the Ghanian province and “I Have A Solution To Oppression,” which he opened with the quip, “Which in case you’re wondering… I don’t.” When asked about his writing process, Coffin said that instead of forcing himself to write all at once, he waits until something solid has formed in his head.
Jemel Nejaime was the third reader of the afternoon and a student at Manchester Community College. His first poem, “Blank Document,” was inspired by the frustration many writers feel when contending with writer’s block. His other poems focused on the innocence of a snow fort (“Regency”) to the loss of the same innocence in his poem “Losing,” which is concerned with the disillusionment of growing up and accepting the connections that have been made may actually not exist. His final poem, “O.C.Dog” was simple and light-hearted. There is a candidness to writing about every day events, about ironing boards, obsessive dogs and cold sores. His style speaks directly to the advice he said had guided him through the process of learning to write poetry: “Don’t be sentimental and pollute the poetry; let the words speak for themselves.”
Felicity Sheehy, a senior at Yale University, was the fourth reader of the program. Her poetry focused on the description of the landscape of her home in upstate New York, in the poems “Driving North of Green Country” and “Lockport.” The poems evoked nostalgia for her home and the atmosphere of belonging that she felt in that terrain. The other poems focused on the relationships between people and how they are maintained. Her final poem, “The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife” was inspired by imagining herself as part of a painting. Sheehy said she typically didn’t have an audience in mind, but if her poetry could strike the interest of someone who typically did not read poetry, she would consider it successful.
The final reader was Amulic, who is studying creative writing and psychology at Conn. Most of the writing she shared was part of her senior thesis on personal and cultural identity in Yugoslavia. She described her own poetry as a sort of “imagined dramatic monologue.” She can only attempt to understand everything she wants to write about, as evidenced in the poems “Exhuming,” “To My Sister” and “Baby Brother.” She explores different perspectives within her own family, such as her mother’s point of view. Two of the other poems are about her experiences traveling to Europe: “The Trevi Fountain” and “Built for Discomfort.”
Charles Hartman, English professor and Poet in Residence at Conn, made a pivotal observation at the beginning of the reading. He said that not only was the existence of this award for young writers a victory for the promotion of the arts, but it was an opportunity to see where poetry would be going in the next generation directly from the poets that would lead it forward. After listening to these talented artists read their work, it is certain that the future of poetry is in good hands.
