Featured Senior 2024: An Interview with Madi Bandera

Along with being a senior, Madi was the winner of the Excellence Award in Writing, First Place in Undergraduate Poety with the piece, “A Cosmic Poem for My Father” and Honorable Mention in the same category with the piece “My Mother Was Born From A Star”, Congragulations Madi!

By morgan Mckenna

A bit about yourself and your campus involvement.

My campus involvement has admittedly been very limited. I was one of the co-editors for last year’s Analecta and was one of the presenters at the URC (Undergraduate Research Conference) last April for Kelcey Ervick’s Narrative Collage class, so those were exciting experiences.

What are your post graduation plans?

Honestly, my plans after graduation are wherever the wind takes me. I intend to keep working as a tutor for the Writer’s Room on campus, and might pursue grad school within a year, most likely here at IUSB.

What advice do you have for current students?

I couldn’t settle on just one piece of advice, so pick your poison:

1. Give yourself grace: You’re people first, students second
2. Be brave; you might surprise yourself
3. Don’t compare yourself to others (excruciating, I know). Compare yourself to your self from last week instead.

And some fond memory of your time at here IUSB?

Not trying to self-aggrandize, but a really special moment for me was winning the Undergraduate Poetry Award in 2022, and again this year in 2024. The 2022 poem honored my late grandmother and the ceremony that year happened to fall on what would’ve been her 79th birthday, while my winning poems this year celebrated my parents and my other grandmother who also recently passed away. Sharing those experiences with friends and family who came to support me meant a lot.

Lastly, have you had any notable professors and any favorite classes?

I was fortunate enough to have many brilliant and understanding professors. David Dodd Lee’s poetry workshops helped solidify my love and style for poetry. I also enjoyed any class with Rebecca Brittenham. Her classes were always so intriguing, especially with topics like Victorian Ghost Literature or Food in Literature. I also had Elaine Roth for the first time this semester, and she is a born academic.

Congragulations again, and best of luck to whatever comes after graduation!

Recommendation Station: Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields by Ashley Capps

Ashley Capps, a wonderful poet whose slice-of-life story unfolds in the pages of Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields.

 
By Morgan McKenna

Hailing from Northern Carolina, Capps received her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has held fellowships from the Iowa Arts Council and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. And in her first book Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields published in 2006, readers are let into her life through an epiphany, symbolisms of animals and the turmoil of interpersonal relationships through the lens of hindsight.

Cover for Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields

To start at the beginning is to start with the epiphany of being displaced. Her first poem is the book, “Hymn for Two Choirs,” sets the tone early in the morning where restlessness staves off sleep and a question is asked, “Why did I only live for one thing.” Compared to a huge dog and a neighbor’s t-shirt, she can only sit and ponder as the world passes her by.

In her very next poem of the humble and poisonous name, “God Bless Our Crop-Dusted Wedding Cake,” the turmoil of her family slowly begins to reveal itself. A brief family of a mother drunk, a father reckless, and a sister dead and gone. But this second poem has a point of view through her father’s eyes, it is through his imagined point of view Capps comes to terms with this part of her life. Where despite the turmoil, sentimentality shows through.

Several of these poems in this book are about an ex, the more popular to quote being “Reading an Ex-Lover’s First Novel.” But I’d like to look at the poem, “Gripes the Lover Leveled (Leaving).” Here there is symbolism of a dog on a sweater, a familiar beast out of place when tied to the sweater it is sewn onto. The tone is agitated with Capps pronouncing herself “gaudy and ruthless,” likely through her ex’s words, a relationship to be good and done with but to look back on and not forget why things ended.

In current days, Capps lives in the Blue Ridge mountains in North Carolina. She works with the animal rights non-profit Free from Harm. And she is a writer, editor, and researcher for the food and climate justice non-profit A Well-Fed World. Capps is working on a second collection of poems entitled The FOReSt. Some of her most recent work was published in Indiana University South Bend’s very own annual online literary journal, The Glacier. And she co-edits THE NEW SENT(I)ENCE, with the poet Allison Titus, an animal poetry anthology and manifesto forthcoming from Trinity University Press this year.

Ashley Capps out on a mountainside,
sourced from the about section of her own wordpress site

Recommendation Station: The Firm

“A happy lawyer is a productive lawyer.” – Oliver Lambert, Senior Partner at Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis

by morgan mckenna

Cover for the novel as of 2009.

I’ve always enjoyed a good thriller. One that’s a slow burn and creates great suspense. I would say The Firm by John Grisham checks both those boxes nicely. Taking place in the 1990’s where one of the highest pieces of technology is a photocopier, the pacing of this novel is nice and slow.

The Firm is a tale following Mitchell McDeere, a Harvard law graduate, hired on to a small Memphis firm specializing in international tax law for only the richest of clientele. Being provided a new house for himself and his wife, a new car, access to vacation homes in the Caribbeans, and opportunities for upwards mobility within the firm, it seems to be the perfect time to settle down, begin thinking about kids and enjoying the money well earned. That is until cracks in the workplace began to become more noticeable.

There have been five partner deaths within the past fifteen years for the firm and it’s brought unwanted attention to their work. An FBI agent connected to the two most recently dead partners seeks McDeere out and he starts to see things aren’t as clean cut at the firm as they first appeared. Secrets are everywhere in the smoke surrounding the firm. But the fire is raging ever brighter as McDeere soon finds it time to sink or swim, trusting no one if he’s to make it out of this alive.

Cover to my personal copy of The Firm.

John Grisham published The Firm in 1991 as a legal thriller and how it thrills. A film by the same name was produced in 1993 as an adaptation of the novel. This was directed by Sydney Pollack, and starred Tom Cruise as McDeere. A second film adaptation was produced in 2012 where Grisham helped with production and Josh Lucas played McDeere. It can be compared well to Better Call Saul and contrasted against it just as well. Wit and crime carry throughout both stories and McDeere’s doesn’t end in The Firm. A sequel called The Exchange: After The Firm carries on McDeere’s story. Recently published in October 2023. It’s received mixed reception but from the first book, I’d be inclined to see how the second carries on following McDeere’s thrilling tale from the Memphis firm.