ArtBeat 2009 pics

David Dodd Lee

Nancy Botkin

the masses

talia reed

the booth is swamped; we call in extra troops

iusb alums! rebecca gerdes, naoko fujimoto, r. sanford smith, ann weedon

kelcey parker, david dodd lee, ken smith, talia reed

Charmi, Talia, Naoko

Clayton Michaels

merz

Literary Arts Collective table

IUSB Writers at Art Beat – Join us!

IUSB Faculty and Alumni writers will sell books and chapbooks at ArtBeat this Saturday, 9/26 in downtown South Bend. We will give short readings between 11:30-12:00 at the Key Bank Plaza, and our booth will be nearby. Look for the Literary Arts Collective.

We are: David Dodd Lee, Nancy Botkin, Talia Reed, Kelcey Parker, and Clayton Michaels.

Hope to see you there!

<<<< poster art by IUSB grad, Naoko Fujimoto!

Tales of an MFA-in-Progress #2: Exhaustion

Tales of an MFA-in-Progress: Exhaustion Sets In

by Ryan Sanford Smith

It’s been over a month now since I first wrote on my experiences heading into an MFA program, and a lot has his transpired—I moved into the Fischer grad. residency on campus, a short and beautiful walk from, you guessed it, the stadium (and some other buildings, I’m told, but who cares?).  I’m living with someone not of my family for the first time, an experience I was dreading but one that has turned out to be far more enjoyable than anyone might have guessed. I’ve begun classes, with all the excitement and megatonic stress that comes with them.

With everything that’s happened, I thought it might be a good time to pause and reflect on a few things I feel like I’ve already learned (and not yet learned) a few weeks into the ND MFA program:

For one thing, everyone is, basically, as busy and frazzled as human beings can conceivably be, myself included.  If you see someone playing Frisbee on the quad, you can rest assured that there’s no way said person is a graduate student. If you see someone sprawled out relaxingly in the grass somewhere among the grad. residency buildings, it is only because they have collapsed from sheer exhaustion while walking back from class, and medical personnel should promptly be alerted. Personally, my reading load is averaging about 2.5 books per week; usually, one book of poetry, one book for my literature class (a very interdisciplinary course with books covering topics from sociology, pedagogical theory, political science, philosophy, and so on), and another 100 or so pages between them of articles and essays provided through the e-reserve system.

With all this in mind, it’s as important as ever to remind yourself that everyone needs time to relax and work off that stress—your faithful correspondent suggests spending your Saturdays standing in the student section screaming like a banshee (see image).

You’ve heard of the Freshman 15? Welcome to what I’ve dubbed the ‘grad-student gourmet 50’; not as nice a ring to it, and I realize my future career in marketing quips is suspect, but stay with me here. If you don’t cook yourself, there seems to be a very good chance most of not everyone else in your program does or will be trying to. I don’t know if this is the result of so many people escaping dorm life where cooking was probably non-existent or what, but the phenomenon is wonderful. If you’re friendly, you’ll probably be turning down dinner invitations on a nightly basis just to get the aforementioned reading done.

Thanks for reading! Over the next couple of posts I’ll continue this little series as well as touch on some things that I feel I’ve yet to learn around here. Meanwhile, have some of Seattle’s Finest at the Courtside Café for me! GO TITANS!

Forthcoming Faculty Books

Nancy Botkin’s chapbook, In Waves, is coming out in September from March Street Press. Her poems have appeared recently in The Laurel Review, Eclipse, and Fifth Wednesday Journal.  She was solicited by Poetry East for a special edition on the theme of “Seasons.”  They accepted a poem titled “GYN.”

David Dodd Lee’s book of poetry, The Nervous Filaments, will be published by Four Way Books in 2010.

Kelcey Parker’s collection of stories, For Sale By Owner, will be published by Kore Press in 2010.

Now hiring: Editor of Analecta

Now Hiring: Editor of Analecta

The Publications Board is now accepting applications for the position of Editor of our student literary journal, Analecta. (Applicants must be currently enrolled at IUSB.)

Duties include: advertising for submissions, reading and deciding on submitted work (poems, stories, nonfiction, artwork) to be included in the issue, finding and working with an artist on the cover and design, creating a file of the final issue to send to the publisher, working with the publisher to make sure the journal is available in April, etc.

This is a paid position: $600 stipend.

To apply, please contact Prof. Kelcey Parker, faculty advisor of Analecta at: parkerk@iusb.edu

Launching Wolfson Poetry Prize-book competition

Announcing a new national poetry prize to be based at Indiana University South Bend:

2010 Lester R. Wolfson Poetry Award / Deadline March 1, 2010.
Judge: David Dodd Lee, Series Editor

The Lester R. Wolfson Poetry Award is being created in an effort to bring fresh and original voices to the poetry reading public. The prize will be offered annually to any poet writing in English, including poets who have never published a full length book as well as poets who have published several. New and Selected collections of poems are also welcome.

The winning poet will receive $1,000 and publication of his or her book. The winner will also be invited to give a reading at Indiana University South Bend as part of the release of the book. Finalists, other than the prize-winning manuscript, will be considered for publication. The final selection will be made by the Series Editor. Current or former students or employees of Indiana
University South Bend, as well as friends of the Series Editor, are not eligible for the prize.

There is a $25, non-refundable, entry fee, made payable to Wolfson Press. There is no limit on the number of entries an author may submit. Simultaneous submissions are fine, in fact they are encouraged, just please withdraw your manuscript if it gets taken for publication elsewhere. Please include a SASE with each entry. Please include a self-addressed postage paid postcard if you desire confirmation of manuscript receipt. No manuscripts will be returned. Entries sent by e-mail or fax are not permitted; they will be disqualified.

On your cover sheet include name, address, phone number, and e-mail. The manuscript should be paginated and include a table of contents and acknowledgments page. Manuscripts will be accepted starting December 1, 2009, and ending deadline will be March 1, 2010. Manuscripts received prior to December 1, or postmarked after March 1, will be recycled and the entry fee returned. The winner will receive 50 copies of his or her book. With questions e-mail Davdlee@iusb.edu.

Mail manuscripts to:
Lester R. Wolfson Poetry Award
Indiana University South Bend
Department of English
1700 Mishawaka Avenue
P. O. Box 7111
South Bend, IN 46634-7111

For more information and updates, please visit:

http://www.wolfsonpresspoetry.blogspot.com/

Tales of an MFA-in-Progress: MFA debate

Tales of an MFA-in-Progress: The Great MFA Debate

by Ryan Sanford Smith

Well, it has been a long summer. People will always talk about how Indiana winters seem to stretch on forever, Februaries that can be measured in centuries, but Indiana summer days tend to stretch themselves out as well, particularly for students who often find themselves inundated with free time. This can be a Very Good Thing if one has a lot of things contemplate and prepare for–graduate school, for instance. The first and probably largest of the questions to occupy me this summer was one that has and continues to flame through many academic and creative circles: Am I doing the right thing? Is an MFA a good investment, artistically? Simply put, will the experience of this program make me a better writer?

It certainly isn’t difficult to find opinions on this question. From the well respected, informed, and reasonable to the whackjob hacks, almost everyone who knows what MFA stands for tends to have an almost jarringly intense opinion regarding their pursuit. Most of the standard arguments for both camps are well known (or can be by spending 5 quality minutes with Google), so I won’t spend a lot of time rehashing them, but they boil down to what one might expect: accusations that MFA programs produce a kind of writer that is best described as ‘workshopped into sterility’. Ouch. No small gripe there.

This can be particularly damning, as I’ve spoken with numerous MFA-bound writers that say they chose it over an MA or PhD program because they feared becoming too ‘academically inclined’ in their writing; basically, they’re afraid of producing work that sounds, through a pejorative lens, like a graduate student wrote it; tell these folks that an MFA will do essentially the same thing, and it’s bound to get their attention.

MFA programs have their defendants, of course; one opinion that I’ve personally found reassuring since first reading it can be read here in a blog post by the talented and dearly missed poet Reginald Shepherd. It feels almost impossible to give my opinion on pursuing an MFA without what amounts to plagiarizing his. What it comes down to, for me, is that it cannot be an inherently bad thing to give someone two or three years to write. Add in the other ingredients of your standard MFA regiment–access to educated and experienced writers in the faculty, intense workshopping, camaraderie with fellow writers and (one would hope) lovers of literature, and the landscape only seems to grow brighter.

Sure, there is a lot of influence, but what doesn’t influence a writer? One’s undergraduate work directly affects, to some extent, the kind of writing one does, yet there are few arguments against attending a university altogether because of that fact. When I reflect on my education at IU South Bend, there were aspects I found more enjoyable or helpful than others, but nothing could be said to have hurt my writing. Perspective is key: everything you experience educates you; past that, it’s up to you.

Like anything else, particularly when it comes to education, I find it hard to view MFA programs as anything other than what one puts into their work there, as well as a basic acknowledgement that one will be influenced, and should always be wary of that influence. Even if someone were to disregard nearly everything imparted to them in their stay in an MFA, they cannot deny an education through exposure–knowing what you don’t like is as important as learning what you do. This was really the crux of my decision many months ago that I wanted to continue my education via an MFA: even if it bores me, even if it makes me miserable or forces me down creative roads I find unhelpful, it simply and absolutely cannot make me a worse writer for all of the wear. Spending two years surrounded by people educated of and passionate about art is also hard to shy away from.

When I think about how I’m approaching the MFA program I’ll be entering at Notre Dame this Fall, my mind returns to one simple but powerful Latin phrase: hypotheses non fingo. ‘I feign no hypotheses’. I don’t know yet how this particular artistic expedition is going to inform my poetry, but I feel more than assured that it will not hinder it. I also know from the folks I’ve met so far that I’ll be in fine company.

Introducing “Tales of an MFA-in-Progress”

As we get set for a new academic year at IU South Bend, one of our most recent graduates, Ryan Smith, is preparing for his first semester at Notre Dame’s MFA program in poetry.

I’ve asked Ryan if he would be willing to contribute regular blog entries throughout his time at Notre Dame — to give us a bit of an insider’s view to the ups and downs of being an MFA student. And he has generously agreed! Thus, we have Tales of an MFA in Progress.

His first post on the “Great MFA Debate” will be available very soon.

Here’s a picture of Ryan (right; Mitch on left) already sporting his University of Notre Dame sweatshirt, even while he was still an IU South Bend student. We can only hope he will wear IUSB sweatshirts at ND!

Seeking Analecta Editor

When the new semester begins, the Publications Board will be accepting applications for the position of Editor of our student literary journal, Analecta. Applicants will be interviewed by the board. This is a paid position–a $600 stipend.

Duties include: advertising for submissions, reading and deciding on work (poems, stories, nonfiction, artwork) to be included in the issue, finding and working with an artist on the cover and design, creating a file of the final issue to send to the publisher, working with the publisher to make sure the journal is available in April, etc.

MORE INFORMATION AND A FORMAL CALL FOR APPLICANTS WILL BE AVAILABLE WHEN SCHOOL STARTS.

Why don’t we crave what’s good for us?

Great article:

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2009_07_014752.php

These are the first few paragraphs.

Unputdownable: More Thoughts on Reader’s Block

A friend once told me that there’s a secret, addictive ingredient in Doritos, and also in barbeque-flavored potato chips. It creates an unavoidable biological response that makes you need to just cram your maw with these gross, fake-food products until you either run out, or your organs explode into human foie gras and you die fatter than Elvis. I googled, and found out that there’s MSG in there, and some other flavor enhancers — some that come from pigs and fish (sorry, vegetarian Dorito-eaters), and some that are unsafe for babies and asthmatics. Why would our human bodies crave non-foods, chemicals that make us puffy and sluggish and headachy and zitty and fat? Why don’t we crave what’s good for us?

Now, certain foods are healthy and wonderful and real, and just as addictively delicious as bad potato chips. We don’t only crave junk, and we don’t only crave delicacies. And of course, each of us does not crave the same foods. I am all about lemons, sour candy, salt-and-vinegar chips, and sauerkraut. My ex-boyfriend needed licorice and marzipan.

There’s the same weird problem with books. There are good, or even great books that are hard to read or slow-going, and also bad, waste-of-time books that are a slog. There are brilliant books that are unputdownable, but also piece-of-shit, brain-rotting books that are unputdownable. How do we tell which is which? How do we sate our cravings without making ourselves sick? And how do we isolate those key ingredients that enhance flavor, and find them in wholesome forms?