Poet’s colorful personality shines through during reading
Poet Jennifer Grotz’s engaging style and colorful personality brought her work to life when she visited the Syracuse University campus Wednesday.
Grotz interacted with students during a Q-and-A session followed by a reading at 5:30 p.m. in Gifford Auditorium in Huntington Beard Crouse as part of the Raymond Carver Reading Series.
Students in the ETS 107: ‘Living Writers’ class conducted the Q-and-A session, which mainly focused on Grotz’s writing style, the structure of her most recent book, ‘The Needle,’ and her philosophy of writing poems.
Grotz said a lot of her writing is done intuitively and by sound. She said she often uses words before she understands what they really mean. Many of her poems are sparked by a detail or description of something she sees.
‘Sometimes poems just happen if your eyes and ears are open,’ Grotz said.
Grotz said she doesn’t think about readers as much as she used to when writing poetry. Instead, she finds it more helpful to imagine that no one will ever read them. In general, Grotz said her poems are written mostly to herself and, at times, to God.
‘I think of poems as being kind of like prayers, and that sort of works because if you think of writing a poem to somebody like God … He’s not really going to say, ‘I completely disagree with you, Jennifer.’ That helps,’ she said.
Many students also asked about the structure of her book and how it developed.
Grotz said she writes each poem by itself, without any idea of how it fits into a book. When she puts books together, she tries to include a variety of poems and said she thinks her ‘thumbprint of originality’ is on all her poems and unites the collection.
Mary Bromfield, a freshman biology major, enjoyed Grotz’s approach to the Q-and-A and reading.
‘I really liked how she read, and I liked her style of speaking. I thought she answered every question thoroughly and genuinely pondered each question she was asked,’ she said.
Chloe Beaudoin, a freshman public relations major, appreciated the thought and candor with which Grotz answered each question.
‘I thought she was very profound in everything that she said, and I felt like all of her poems and all her words had a purpose,’ she said.
After the Q-and-A, Grotz moved onto the reading. She read six poems from ‘The Needle’ and three new poems she wrote during her time at a French monastery.
Grotz prefaced each poem with an anecdote about what inspired it.
Between poems, Grotz engaged with the audience. In one instance, she pointed out a bug that was crawling across the lectern. After she finished reading a particularly long poem, she poked fun at the outbreak of coughing that erupted from the audience.
‘Is that all the coughs we got?’ she joked as she got ready to read her next poem.
Published on November 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta
