Faculty poets read work
Ancestors, tattoos and dogs were all subject of poems read by the four faculty poets, Wednesday at the David B. Haight Alumni Center.
“My theme today will be teachers and students and dogs and tattoos,” Star Coulbrooke, director of the writing center and first to read, said.
Coulbrooke delivered on all of her promises, reading four poems, including “Aerobics by God,” “Old Enough,” and “Tattoo,” three relatively recent, original poems.
Coulbrooke said her poems all had a liberation theme and were moving as well as funny. “Tattoo” describes how she wishes her students would skip class to get tattoos, which she described as “attitude seven layers deep.” She finished with a plea for students to keep on writing.
Brock Dethier read a series of “ancestor poems” from his recently published chapbook “Ancestor Worship.” His eight-great grandmother Susannah Martin was executed in 1692 during the Salem Witch Trials.
“She made black puppies appear to a drunk in the dark,” Dethier said in description of her alleged crimes.
Like Coulbrooke, Dethier was able to deal with intensely serious subject matter due to an irresistible humor. In his poem “After Rehab,” he muses of the unusual direction his life has taken.
“At this point of my life I should have two kids and a Prius, not be admitting bankruptcy to a toothless circle of alcoholics,” he said.
Even after Coulbrooke and Dethier’s differing styles of poetry, the next poet managed to differ still.
“I like to think of these poems as Haikus with a little bit of acid,” said Anne Shifrer before delivering a fast-paced series of poems.
Her subjects varied, starting with a poem about Spring City, Utah, ending with a poem about her father’s Parkinson’s disease and slipping in a reflection on New Zealand’s flightless kakapo.
Shanon Ballam finished up the afternoon with a suite of poems dealing with the story of Red Riding Hood. When writing from the wolf’s perspective, she likened the smell of fresh-cut wood to the scent of “broken bone leaking marrow.”
Mark Spragg is the next speaker in the Department Speaker Series. He will be reading on Thursday, Sept. 18 in the Haight Alumni Center.