Poet laureate shares humor, love of writing
“Unlike loons, humans do not mate for life; our brains outweigh us.”
So read Ken Brewer, the poet laureate of Utah, from his own writing at a benefit for the Adrienne Platero Creative Writing Award. An audience member gave Brewer a loon carved from a No. 5 wood to request that particular poem, entitled “Loons.”
“At my age, that’s the best thing to do, to make a loon out of it,” Brewer said.
Brewer, who retired from Utah State University in 2000 after 32 years, read his own poetry Monday night in the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium, as well as works from Platero and other students and faculty who have attended USU
The event raised money for a newly established award named for Platero, who earned her bachelor’s degree from USU. Platero was diagnosed with leukemia in late November and died suddenly over Thanksgiving Break, said Brewer, her former teacher.
“She was a wonderful student,” he said. “It was fun to watch a student like that grow and start writing really quality work.”
The Adrienne Platero Creative Writing Award was established when a couple anonymously donated $1,000 to the English department at Platero’s funeral, said Star Coulbrooke, the organizer of the event.
Members of the department decided to use the money as a cash prize for the winner of the annual Creative Writing Contest. Platero had won the contest her senior year but was unable to use the former prize, which went toward USU tuition, because she was graduating, Coulbrooke said.
“It’s really nice to have some sort of a memorial that helps someone else,” Brewer said. “I think it’s a great idea, and I was happy to support it.”
Brewer was chosen to be the state’s poet laureate by Gov. Mike Leavitt in January. He donated his time, 30 photography greeting cards with poems and a portion of the proceeds from his book “Lake’s Edge,” which was sold along with the cards at the reading.
“Everyone wanted to donate because they knew [Platero],” Coulbrooke said. “She was just one of those students who always excelled. She had a gorgeous smile, and I never saw her without it.”
Brewer read about 30 poems to nearly the same number of people in the audience. Coulbrooke said the event had fewer attendees than she’d hoped because of poor advertising.
Platero’s works included poems covering topics from Goblin Valley to horse chestnuts to the differences between roommates: “You fall in lust; I fall in like, and neither can understand why.”
Many of the poems Brewer read from his own works made the audience members laugh. His topics included the paranoia about becoming a grandfather, a girl who lost her finger in a trailer hitch and why dogs stopped
flying.
One poem told the story, which Brewer conceded was slightly exaggerated, of when the Logan River flooded his home. It included tales of a man fishing by his desk and wading through his yard. And when his daughter wanted to hold her wedding reception in his home, the man pictured gondolas floating through his living room.
“Of course, of course, he shouts, ‘We’ll serve them trout,'” read Brewer. Coulbrooke said she hopes the fund is able to be self-perpetuating, so a $1,000 cash award can be given to each year’s overall winner in the contest.
This year’s reception for the Creative Writing Contest will be held on April 3 at 7 p.m. in the Alumni Center. For more information, see the department’s Web site, websites.usu.edu/english.
–kcartwright@cc.usu.edu