“If you’re doing it right, it’s still work. Real, sometimes emotionally and intellectually exhausting work. It’s filled with rejections. As with all art, we do it because there’s really no other choice.” – Dr. Rebecca Pelky, IUSB Alumni
By Natasha O’Hara
Theyy’reeee Baaccccck! 4 IUSB Alumni Poets are making their return to campus for a live reading of their work. There will be appearances by Dr. Rebecca Pelky, Steve Henn, Stephanie Erdman, and Dr. Kristin LaFollette. Join me in picking their brains, learning more about their writing, as well as their experiences as an IUSB student. Explore their various responses, which provide a refreshing perspective on poetry’s limitlessness, and familiarize yourself with them prior to next weeks poetry reading. Personally, I believe this is a pretty enticing event, but my love of poetry makes me biased. After learning more about these poets and their work, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to see them live. If interested in coming to the 4 Alumni event, it’s on Tuesday, October 25th at 5:30 pm, in DW 1001. Pizza is also included!
Dr. Rebecca Pelky
is an assistant professor of film and creative writing at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York and is a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin. After graduating from IUSB with a bachelor of arts in English, Pelky continued with her education, receiving a MFA in creative writing from Northern Michigan University and her PhD in English from the University of Missouri. Her first book of poetry, Horizon of the Dog Woman was published in January 2020. Her second collection of poems, Through a Red Place, won the 2021 Perugia Press Prize.
When did you acquire your love of poetry?
When I was maybe 10, I found a book in my grandparent’s closet called Poetry of Youth, and I think that really started me on the path. It was all poems like “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes and “The Ballad of East and West,” by Kipling, with these galloping rythyms that entranced me. I still write very naturally with those rythyms today.
Do you have any favorite memories during your time at IUSB?
I read my poetry in public for the first time while at IUSB, at the readings that Clayton Michaels, if I’m remembering correctly, set up at Fiddler’s Hearth. That was a huge milestone for me.
As a kid, what was your dream job? How different or similar is it to what you are doing now?
I wanted to work with animals. My first degree was a BS in zoology, and I became a zookeeper for 13 years. I was still doing that full time while I was taking classes at IUSB. I loved that job, but I realized I needed something different, and poetry was that thing. I still tell people I’m probably the only zookeeper poet they’ll ever meet.
How difficult is it to fit time in your life to write? What do you do to make time?
It is pretty difficult, to be honest. After publishing three books in three years, I’m taking a break and not worrying about it right now. But for me, the key to writing has been research. I’m most productive when I’m going to historical sites or archives or museums, but those trips take time too.
Do you share your work in progress poems with anyone?
Yes, sometimes. Since finishing grad school after eight years, I’ve had to adjust to a place that doesn’t have a built-in writing workshop. Having to actively seek that out (especially during COVID) has been challenging, but worth the effort. Writers need a writing community.
Do you have any favorite professors and/or classes from your time at IUSB?
Loads. David Dodd Lee’s publishing class. Lee Kahan encouraged me to present research on Alexander Pope at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. That experience is one of the reasons I felt confident enough to go to grad school. I remember having a fantastic discussion/argument with Benjamin Balthaser about John Rollins Ridge’s book, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta. Before that I didn’t even know Native people were writing anything, muchless books, in the 19th century. Now one aspect of my research is focused on poetry written by Indigenous people before 1900.
Is there anything you’ve learned from writing that you wish you knew when you first started?
If you’re doing it right, it’s still work. Real, sometimes emotionally and intellectually exhausting work. It’s filled with rejections. As with all art, we do it because there’s really no other choice.
Who are your favorite poets (living or deceased)?
Such a tough question, but these are some of the poets I always come back to: Thomas Lux. Franz Wright. Diane Glancy. Linda Hogan. Tommy Pico. Jennifer Foerster. Chase Twitchell. Deborah Miranda.
How does your family feel about your work?
My mom has always been very supportive, though I know she worried when I quit my unionized zoo job to go back to school to write poems. My family in general may not understand everything I do, but they’ve always supported me doing it.
What are you currently reading?
The Trickster Riots by Taté Walker, and a book called The Gathering: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relations, co-written by a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people
Steve Henn
is in his 19th year of teaching English at Warsaw Community High School. Henn received his bachelor of arts in English from IUSB, and has since published five books of poetry: Unacknowledged Legislations (2011), And God Said: Let there be Evolution! (2012), Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (2015), Guilty Prayer (2021), and his latest collection, American Male (2022).
When did you realize you enjoyed poetry?
I started writing in high school. I thought the Beats were pretty hip people then. At IUSB, an older classmate named Don Winter introduce me to some small press publications – from copy and staple garage made stuff to Chiron Review and 5 A.M., which were tabloids. That small press stuff, which is heavy on blue collar and non-academically oriented perspectives, was the soup I swam in for a few years, and gradually I started reading more widely and getting into poets irrespective of their affiliation with universities or lack thereof. It’s been a process. The first poet who really took the top of my head off was Bob Hicok. That’s probably where I started getting serious. When writing my 2nd book and reading all of Hicok.
What was your dream job as a child? How different or similar is it to what you are doing now?
People have dream jobs as children? Gross.
When I was a teenager I really didn’t want to work for a living for a lifetime. The thought repulsed me. Blame it on the Beats, I guess, or my laziness. A character in the movie Slacker says “to hell with the kind of work you’ve got to do to earn a living” and I sort of felt that way through much of adolescence and early adulthood.
Any other work besides writing poetry?
Not much, if I can help it. Besides teaching. I drove a cab during the summer of 21 for about 15 shifts. I wouldn’t mind a side-hustle but at the same time I find it kind of insulting that I’m a professional K-12 teacher and I have to go looking for work beyond my main job to avoid draining my savings account every summer. [Redacted] the IN state legislature.
What are some of your favorite memories during your time at IUSB?
One time in Ken Smith’s poetry class, the only poetry workshop I took as an undergrad, a student wrote a love poem about her husband and compared his hands on her back to warm dinner plates. That stuck with me. Eleanor Lyons was an excellent teacher. One time I asked Margaret Scanlon why it was such a big deal that I hadn’t read many women authors at age 25. I had things yet to learn.
How difficult is it to fit time in your life to write? What do you do to make time?
I’m currently doing A Fairly Terrible Job at getting poems down but it’s really not for lack of time. My advice to newer writers is to pick up the notebook several times a day. Getting things down even 5 or 10 or 15 minutes at a time adds up over time. Plus, when you have a tendency to turn to the notebook, you find yourself turning to it by habit when something occurs to you that’s poem-worthy or whatever, and you may spend more time that you realize, then, working on poems.
Do you share your work in progress poems with anyone?
Sometimes with Joe Chaney, occasionally with Ken Smith. But often, no. I really don’t have much of an active poetry community in my life. I talk to people here and there on twitter and fb occasionally but I’m not great at developing meaningful relationships with people in contact mainly through the smartphone. Which is weird because I scroll addictively like a moron for hours at a time sometimes.
Do you have any favorite professors and/or classes from IUSB?
Joe Chaney was my adviser, and I still wish I would’ve taken one of his Shakespeare courses – but I did do an independent study post-graduation with him (spring 2018) – and many of the poems written at that time are great work and his guidance was excellent. Eleanor Lyons was exceptional for 20th Century American Lit and I ended up doing an independent study with her to read more Hemingway and Faulkner and Leslie Marmon Silko. There was a Roman History class – I liked that professor, but had trouble keeping up with the reading. I appreciated that “Chemistry of Food, Health, and Disease” was all topical issues and short papers to write and so got a good grade in Chemistry, which I really have no business achieving if I’m doing standard chemical formulas and all that. Frances Sherwood was a lively fiction instructor. Took a workshop with David Dodd Lee in fall 2017 and that experience was revelatory. Guilty Prayer came out of that time largely.
Is there anything you’ve learned that you wish you knew when you got started?
The advice I like to give brand-new writers, high school writers, is just let er rip. You’ve got to get over the hump of being afraid to get started. Also, weirdly – you’re not some kind of spiritual imbecile because you want your writing to be known and appreciated by others. I hate the holy holy crap some writers put on about how they’re ambitious “for the work” and never for themselves. Bullshit. If I was being flown around the country to read my poems at various locales you bet your sweet bippy I’d appreciate it and wouldn’t pretend like my saintly humility is what got me there. But I probably won’t get there. But, whatever.
Who are your favorite poets (living or deceased)?
Larry Levis, Bob Hicok, Frank OHara, Diane Seuss, Mary Ruefle, Patricia Smith, Bob Kaufman, Heather Christle, Kaveh Akbar, Don Winter, Oren Wagner, etc, etc, etc, – I mean, there are tons of poets writing great stuff. There’s a lot of good poetry available these days. These are just the first ones that spring to mind. We are in a period of abundance in poetry – perhaps we have been for half a century, at this point. Szymborska’s one of my favorite non-American poets. I do tend toward the Ameri-centric take on poetry, for better or worse. Frances Sherwood told us American writing is the best writing in Intro to Creative Writing in 2001 or so and I believed her.
How does your family feel about your work?
You’d have to ask them. Some of my siblings collect each book I put out but for some reason or another we don’t talk about the contents of those books, like, at all.
What are you currently reading?
I just finished Kids in American: A Gen X Reckoning by Liz Prato, a very well written memoir in essays type thing. And recently read Kelcey Ervick’s stellar graphic novel about goalkeeping and Title IX. The poem collection I’m poking around in is Benjamin Garcia’s Thrown in the Throat. You can see a lot of what I’m reading on IG at @indiana_sad_man – I post pictures of the covers of most books I am reading or recently read on there.
Stephanie Erdman
is an adjunct professor of English at Southwestern Michigan College. She received her undergraduate degrees from Purdue University and obtained her Masters in English from IUSB. Erdman has two manuscripts that have been accepted for publication, Pyrrhonic and Sankhara. The first is based around her graduate thesis while the second is upcoming from Urban Farmhouse, and focuses on the processes of grief and rebuilding. This coming Spring, Erdman will be moving for a new job position at Georgia’s Albany State University.
When did you first get into poetry?
I suppose this will sound trite, but I really don’t remember a time where I wasn’t writing. It was something that was a habitual practice in our house growing up. I think my mom still has a framed copy of a poem that I wrote for a fifth-grade assignment about colors. Nonetheless, it took until partway through my undergraduate degree for me to take it seriously. I think because poetry is how my mind processes the world, I didn’t think that it was anything that could be a serious pursuit.
What other work do you do besides writing poetry?
Professionally, I teach and tutor, but I have many ‘working’ hobbies: knitting, raising livestock, gardening, and I’ve recently gotten into baking and canning. I guess those homesteading kind of skills give me a lot of contemplative time. I also like working on cars and hope to eventually get either a welding or mechanics certification.
Any favorite memories during your time at IUSB?
Not specific moments, but overall, the conversations and camaraderie that came from the experience.
What did you want to be as a child? How different or similar is it to what you are doing now?
Honestly, and I’ve been told by a favorite fiction professor to never admit this, I wanted to be a firetruck. Not a fireman…I thought that I’d just sprout ladders and hoses and have a specific purpose someday. I think what I do now, teaching English composition and writing poetry, is about as far from having a specific purpose as I could be. In the abstract, through my one-on-one conversations with students I am able to be a lifeline sometimes.
How difficult is it to fit time in your life to write? What do you do to make time?
I am probably the least disciplined writer you’ll ever meet. I really have tried everything: making the space, making the time, creating a habit, building a ceremony. When I do those things, I’m more focused on the artifice of writing than the process of creating. So, I don’t really find time. Like a healthy adult, I bottle it up like emotions until I can’t hold it in any longer and it all comes tearing sleeplessly out of me for days at a time.
Do you have any favorite professors and/or classes from IUSB?
Mostly, I enjoyed all my classes. I gained a lot from working with David Dodd Lee in particular and Benjamin Balthaser contributed to my thesis significantly. Ken Smith has defined for me what it means to be a professor of style and composition. And Joe Chaney definitely taught me to question what I thought I knew.
Do you share your work in progress poems with anyone?
Very rarely. I do have a small community of trusted readers, but my personal editing and revision process is so extensive that, with few exceptions, by the time someone else sees something it’s usually what I consider to be polished work.
Is there anything you’ve learned that you wish you knew when you started?
That there are no rules. What I love about language is that language, English specifically, is not a highly specialized tool with pieces precisely suited to individual tasks. No parts that just pop out to perform one perfect task and are then put away until we need them again. I wish I’d learned to write rebelliously as a baby writer.
Who are your favorite poets (living or deceased)?
Kenneth Koch, Cliff Weber, Geoffrey Hill, Barbara Guest, John Gallaher, Frank O’Hara, Katie Ford, to name a few.
How does your family feel about your work?
I don’t believe I’ve ever really asked, but my mother has always been really supportive of my literary pursuits. I think my book publications have made the Christmas letter.
What are you currently reading?
Honestly, I’m in the middle of two different academic semesters, so mostly student essays and assigned course reading. I still haven’t made it all the way through Ulysses (and anyone who tells you they have is bragging). I do have a cache of poetry collections in my bedside table that I’ll open in a free moment, but I think that’s more distraction than active reading.
Dr. Kristin LaFollette
is an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana (USI). After graduating with her M.A. in 2013, LaFollette worked as an adjunct professor at IUSB and Indiana Tech (Mishawaka and Elkhart). She moved to Ohio in 2014 to start her doctoral program in rhetoric and writing studies, graduating with her PhD in 2019. That same year, LaFollette moved to Evansville, IN, after accepting the position from USI. Her first collection of poetry, Body Parts, won the 2017 GFT Press Chapbook Contest and her full length collection, Hematology, won the 2021 Laureate Prize from Small Harbor Publishing.
How did you get into writing poetry?
I majored in pre-medicine (biology) for most of my undergraduate career. Going into my final year, I needed a change and talked with my advisor about other options. I mentioned my love of writing and she referred me to the English department. The first English class I took was creative writing with David Dodd Lee. While I always loved writing, I never wrote much poetry, but that class helped me realize my love for poetry and made me want to keep studying writing and practicing my craft.
Do you have any favorite memories during your time at IUSB?
For all four years of undergrad, I lived on campus with my childhood best friend, Cohen. When we started in 2007, the student apartments weren’t built yet, so we lived in a university-owned house on the edge of campus (on Esther Street). We moved into the new student apartments the next year (and lived in Building A for two years and B for one year, although I think the buildings have different names now?). We had the best time. Cohen passed away in 2017, so I’m very grateful we were able to make so many memories in college.
What other things do you do besides writing poetry?
I write essays and the occasional short story, and I’m an artist and photographer. I also create hybrid-genre work, and my interest in that came about because of a class I took with Dr. Kelcey Ervick as an undergraduate. The course was focused on “narrative collage” and the intersecting of image and text. As an M.A. student, Dr. Ervick directed my thesis and allowed me to create a hybrid project that combined elements of prose, poetry, and artwork/photography. My doctoral thesis explored the intersecting of image and text, as well.
My scholarly interests include the rhetoric of health and medicine, medical humanities, gender and sexuality studies, and arts-based approaches to research and teaching (and I’ve published a few recent articles on these topics).
What was your dream job as a child? How different or similar is it to what you are doing now?
In first grade, we had a “career day” where we talked to the class about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I said I wanted to be a writer, but years later, my love of medicine led me to pursue a degree in pre-medicine (I planned to attend medical school and become a physician). I’m grateful that, as a professor, writer, and researcher, I still get to bring medicine into the work I do.
How difficult is it to fit time in your life to write? What do you do to make time?
It is difficult to find time because I’m usually so busy with work. These days, most of my creative writing happens during breaks and over the summer when I have more free time.
Do you share your work in progress poems with anyone?
Not usually, but I’m a perfectionist and it takes a long time for me to feel like a poem is ready to share/submit. I will read it, reread it, and revise, revise, revise. Additionally, if I think a poem is complete, I’ll walk away from it for a few days and come back with fresh eyes before calling it “finished.”
Do you have any favorite professors and/or classes from IUSB?
I loved all my professors at IUSB! I’m especially grateful to David Dodd Lee for cultivating my interest in poetry and Dr. Ervick for helping me see the ways my interests in both art and writing could come together.
Who are your favorite poets (living or deceased)?
Right now, I’m really enjoying Rebecca Aronson, Michael McGriff, and Sylvia Plath.
How does your family feel about your work?
My parents have always been incredibly supportive of my writing, which is great because so much of what I write is about them and for them. Hematology is dedicated to my family, and the poetry manuscript I’m working on now is for my parents. It can sometimes be weird to write about people who will read your work, but I think my family knows I will put the utmost love and care into writing about our relationships and the struggles we have weathered together.
What are you currently reading?
Recently, author Lydia Conklin came to USI to read from their new short story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, so I picked up a copy of that. It’s been a great read so far.
The Deadline 