Author fulfills childhood aspirations by writing poetry
Poet Jennifer Grotz will be making an appearance at Syracuse University after her visit to campus last year was canceled due to a snowstorm.
The reading of Grotz’s book, ‘The Needle,’ was rescheduled for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Gifford Auditorium in Huntington Beard Crouse. A Q-and-A with Grotz conducted by students in the ETS 107: ‘Living Writers’ class will precede the reading from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m., according to an Oct. 27 SU News release.
The reading is part of the Raymond Carver Reading Series, which brings 10 to 12 authors to campus each year to read from their own works and interact with students. The event is free and open to the public.
Grotz, who is also the author of ‘Cusp,’ her award-winning first poetry collection, is currently an assistant professor at the University of Rochester.
Grotz said she couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t writing poems, but as a child she wanted to be either a priest or a country western singer when she grew up.
‘Becoming a poet was how I fulfilled both of those interests simultaneously,’ Grotz said in an email.
Her childhood interest in music carried her to poetry, as she pays special attention to the fact that her poems sound good to the ear, she said. In general, Grotz said she enjoys writing in sentences as much as lines and likes to write ‘clear, elegant poems.’
Grotz’s latest book, ‘The Needle,’ was inspired by her appreciation of Polish poetry. She said she read Polish poetry in translation first, but she later learned Polish to read the poems in the language they were written. Many of the poems in the book are set in Krakow, Poland.
Devon Balk, a freshman writing major who read Grotz’s book for ETS 107, said she enjoyed it.
‘The poems weren’t complex like a lot of other poems are. … They were very straight forward and about subjects you could relate to,’ she said.
Grotz said she hopes the reading will help students realize there are real people behind the books and poems they read.
Said Grotz: ‘I hope that students take joy and comfort in the fact that poems don’t just sleep in Norton anthologies but that they are written by real, live poets who care passionately about the craft and in carrying on poetic traditions.’
Published on November 8, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta
