Tyler Mills Poetry Reading Cover

Featured as the guest reader for the 20th season of the Big Dog Reading Series, Tyler Mills read for us all yesterday in Monty's assembly room.



Mills read a selection of poetry from her book, Hawk Parable, covering themes about nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific and exploring her family's mystery of her grandfather's involvement in the bombing of Nagasaki.



Her poems were varied in tone and perspective, jumping from the point of view of a soldier to searching for bomb testing sites that were wiped out on Google Maps, but each work held a deep respect for their subjects and themes.

During the Q & A at the end of the session, Mills said that she started researching these topics for her poems before 2009, some of her poems taking as long as 3 years to write, and some only taking a few hours. She especially became invested in digging through old videos of released footage of bomb testings. "[At times] I found myself pausing these videos and wishing I could stop the bombing," she told the audience.



The evening was a powerful, instructive, and enjoyable one for all of her audience members, full of poignant and moving poems. Tyler Mills' presence at Bloomsburg and her poetic insights were greatly appreciated by all attending. In hearing her poetry, we all agreed with her statement, "To me, poetry has a power to create a voice that's eternal."

EAPSU Conference: A Reflection

The English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities (EAPSU) is a statewide organization with members from the 14 state universities of Pennsylvania. Since 1980, they have been dedicated to showcasing English excellence. Every year they host two conferences - one in the fall for English faculty, and one in the spring for undergraduate English students.  This year, the annual Fall Conference was held at Shippensburg University on October 4-6, which several Bloomsburg students got to visit and participate in!

EAPSU hosts an annual poetry competition for undergraduate students at any of the PA state universities.  This year, we are proud to announce that the first place winner went to Sarah M. Goulet for her poem "For you, my bones."  Adelina Sacouto and Daniel Pintos both received honorable mentions for their poems "Manitas" and "Dream Eaters," respectively.

All three of our students had the opportunity to travel to this conference, along with Professor Wemple, who participated in a panel called "Readings from Central Pennsylvania Poets.”

Our poets read their poems during the Thursday Night Open Mic hosted by Patricia Smith, the Keynote Speaker for the conference.  Patricia Smith, according to the conference guidebook, "is the award-winning author of eight critically-acclaimed books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (Triquarterly Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow (CityFiles Press, 2015), a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson."

Congratulations to our poetry finalists!

From left to right:  Kaitlynn Keiper, Sarah M. Goulet, and Patricia Smith

Daniel Pintos 

Adelina Sacouto

Congrats!

Danielle Evans: Tips for Creative Writers

Last Tuesday, Danielle Evans visited Bloomsburg Campus to talk about short story writing and her collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. During her 7:00 reading at Monty's she read "Boys Go to Jupiter," featured on The Sewanee Review and in The Best American Short Stories 2018, edited this year by Roxanne Gay.  As a piece focused on where innocence trips into mistakes, "Boys Go to Jupiter" is a contemporary piece that challenges how we judge guilt and truth.

Writing Tips

Earlier in the day, Evans hosted a talk with Dr. Lawrence's short story writing class, where she offered some excellent advice for creative writing and her writing process.

According to Evans, there are four components to keep in mind while reading and writing short stories:

1. A good short story is a contained unit in of itself. 
The premise is that something - maybe about the character, or maybe about their situation or worldview - has changed in a permanent way, wherein there is a distinct "before" and "after."  There is an immediate question that gets answered by the end of the story, but secondary questions are left for the reader to ponder.

2. Compression does not necessarily equal minimalism.  
A short story is concise by nature, but it does not have to be minimalist and bare-boned.  If time moves, then pressure builds; Evans encourages understanding how time and flashback/backstory sequences move a story while keeping it compressed.

3. You can have a narrative where the loss of possibility is the pivot point.  
Evans stated that she is personally interested in "stories where the loss of potential" drives the plot.  While some stories are driving up to the point of a great moment of change, others look at the results after a particular decision was made, or ask where the realization was about a past choice.  Tension, in these cases, can also be given by giving information, not just withholding it.

4. The point of view makes a story distinct. 
For this point, Evans asked the following questions:

• Where does the narrative voice come from?
• Do we get scared to "fully inhabit" a point of view?
• How do we frame the contrast between doing and thinking (or internal/external performance)

Evans, a realist writer, says she likes to start writing while thinking of why a character would make a particular choice instead of starting with the character themselves.  Where could we empathize with a character, and when do we judge them?  Her stories like to challenge and blur these boundaries, as "Boys Go to Jupiter" attests. 

If you are interested in other interviews with Danielle Evans or would like to learn about her publications, you can visit her official website here.  

The Great American Read: A Reflection

This past Wednesday, the WVIA teamed up with Bloomsburg University to offer a preview of one of the upcoming episodes of The Great American Read, an eight-part series focused on seeing what kinds of books Americans love and are moved by.  We got to see the entire preview of the "Heroes" episode, which featured books such as:

• Catch-22 
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• The Hunger Games
• Charlotte's Web 
• Don Quixote
• 1984 
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
• The Help
• The Giver
• The Invisible Man
• The Alex Cross series
• The Hunt for Red October

One of the fantastic parts of this series is the way we confront not just what books we love, but why.  Speakers from all walks of life spoke up to affirm the ways we love heroes for what they mean to us.  Most often a favorite book is not based solely on great prose or technical skills; it's all about how something resonated at a certain part of your life, when you needed a relatable or inspirational figure.  Don't we all want a friend as devoted and loving as we see in Charlotte's Web?  Don't we look at figures like Winston Smith in 1984 or Katniss in The Hunger Games and feel how doing what we know is right might make a difference, no matter how slight?  American heroes are relatable, even if they seem unlikely or tragic in some ways.  

After the preview, several of our professors - Dr. Entzminger, Dr. Lawrence, Dr. Francis, and Dr. Decker - held a brief panel to discuss the emotional impact of these books and ask what other students would have voted for (and why!).

The "Heroes" episode will officially air on Tuesday, September 25th.  Other episodes include: "Who Am I," "Villains & Monsters," "Other Worlds," and "What We Do for Love."  

Interested in seeing more episodes or voting for your favorite book?  You can check out the official website for The Great American Read here.  

Vote for your favorite - you can vote every day, once a day.  Let's find out what books are our favorites!