{"id":256,"date":"2016-10-03T14:01:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T18:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/?p=256"},"modified":"2022-11-23T10:43:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T15:43:03","slug":"get-it-in-your-body-alumni-open-up-at-leonard-theater-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/2016\/10\/get-it-in-your-body-alumni-open-up-at-leonard-theater-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Get It In Your Body: Alumni Open Up at Leonard Theater Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Three graduates of Miami\u2019s Poetry MA program\u2014alumni Darren Demaree, Daisy Levy, and Chris Michel\u2014visited the Leonard Theater in Peabody Hall on Tuesday to participate in a roundtable discussion. Each took radically different paths after their MA program, leading to a richly diverse conversation connected by the transference of that passion. They explained how their experience here influenced their present literary identity, with special relation to the talk\u2019s subjects: poetry, translation, journalism, and rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Darren Demaree is a widely-published poet with 5 collections and is the managing director of the Best of the New Anthology web magazine. Chris Michel is a personal essayist and editor for RunnersWorld.com and a former Fulbright scholar to Georgia. Together, Darren and Chris founded Ovenbird, an online poetry magazine.<\/p>\n

Daisy Levy, a PhD in Rhetoric, is Associate Professor and Composition Coordinator at Southern Vermont College. Her studies focus mostly on dance and embodied rhetorics.<\/p>\n

\"unnamed-3\"<\/p>\n

The three were brought on stage by Western Program coordinator Zackary Hill, who prefaced their discussions with an introduction that set the tone for the evening: \u201cAfter they left here, each of them found ways to make language an important part of their lives, and they pursue life with such passion.”<\/p>\n

Though their fields and interests vary widely, their conversation converged on the topics of bodies and myths.  \u201cThere is the mythology of poetry and the practice of poetry, and they are often in conflict with each other.\u201d Daisy said. \u201cThe mythology of poetry is that the mess is absent”.<\/p>\n

The panelists shared their true \u201cpractice\u201d of poetry, without romanticizing or leaving out that mess. Chris noted that before his time at Miami, his \u201cpractice used to be monastic. I thought that you secluded yourself you sweated blood if you needed to and you came out with something pure, but what I really wanted to do was tell stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cComing here did a lot to open up my understanding of what poetry was,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Darren described his practice as \u201cobsessive. In school I had all of the energy directed into poetry and no language. I was fueled by hormones and substances and I had to learn to incorporate my process into it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daisy, wearing two pairs of layered glasses to substitute for bifocals, expressed a discomfort with the capital \u201cP\u201d serious poetry that she was always \u201ctrying to fit into.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of it ever being a safe space is a fantasy,\u201d she said. \u201cI was intimidated by the capital letter Serious Poetry, and I continue to struggle to fit my body into that story.\u201d\"unnamed-1\"<\/p>\n

Most of the time, said Chris, he\u2019d worked on fitting story-telling into his poetry, but his practice opened up when he found himself working for months on translating a piece of Georgian poetry into English.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had been so focused on narrative. All of a sudden I was working in a language that was all about emotion in sound,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI read it out loud, I read it quietly. I sang it. I paced back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got it into your body,\u201d Daisy commented. They all agreed.<\/p>\n

The panelists mulled over the relationship between physicality and poetry, trying to reconcile themselves with the realities of their own practices. Their stories were not neat, they were not solely triumphant, and they didn\u2019t present poetry as beautiful so much as they discussed its centrality in their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoetry is a daily thing for me,\u201d Darren said. \u201cNothing keeps me going more than that I get to go home and write some more Thursday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deanna Krokos
\nEnglish Department Ambassador
\nPolitical Science, Rhetoric, Ethics ’16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three graduates of Miami\u2019s Poetry MA program\u2014alumni Darren Demaree, Daisy Levy, and Chris Michel\u2014visited the Leonard Theater in Peabody Hall on Tuesday to participate in a roundtable discussion. Each took radically different paths after their MA program, leading to a richly diverse conversation connected by the transference of that passion. They explained how their experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1551,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,209,201,210,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-alumni-2","category-events-readings","category-interviews","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/creativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}