Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Playing with Fire: Michener alums receive awards for debut poetry collections
Jessica Garratt, author of "Fire Pond"
Garratt, a native of rural Maryland who also earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from The University of Texas at Austin in 2001, is now completing her doctorate in creative writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she is editor of its acclaimed literary journal, Missouri Review. Her book was selected by judge Medbh McGuckian, who said: “Garratt’s philosophical curiosity and openness are counterpoints to her refreshing wit and humor. She narrates her private heartbreaks candidly but without self pity or narcissism, while infusing her work with an Emersonian sense of place as sacred.” This relatively new prize honors University of Utah’s beloved teacher of poetry, Agha Shahid Ali, who died in 2001.
Fountain—who hails from Las Cruces and did her undergraduate work in theatre arts at New Mexico State—stayed on in Austin first as co-managing director of Grrl Action, a writing and performance program for teenage girls, and now teaches full-time in the English Writing and Rhetoric Department at St. Edward’s University.
Poet Natasha Tretheway selected Fountain’s book manuscript for the National Poetry Series, a literary awards program began in 1978 to heighten the visibility of good poetry in American publishing. Curiously, MCW benefactor James A. Michener was one of its earliest supporters. When the proposal to start such a program was put before the Library of Congress, Michener read of it and was immediately moved to contribute. He released a statement to the press explaining his decision:
I thought it deplorable that…the poet was at such a disadvantage, and it occurred to me that in my education the study of poetry was of at least as much significance as the study of prose . . . . It was an essential part of my inheritance and I would feel impoverished without it . . . . But I also suspected that while I was writing my long books of prose, there might be some gifted young woman at the University of Michigan who was saying it all in some eight-line verse, and saying it much better. There was a real chance that her verse might live a hell of lot longer than my eight hundred pages, and I deemed it deplorable that I could get published while she could not.
The Michener Center for Writers plans a joint reading in Austin as soon as Fountain’s book is available.
