Mississippi’s Poet Laureate Wants to Share Joy of Writing

By BLAKE ALSUP, Northeast Mississippi Each day Journal

STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) — Catherine Pierce tries to start every of her courses with a query.

One thing like, however not particularly: “Would you quite be a shepherd spy — a shepherd who can also be a spy, to not be confused with shepherd’s pie — or a brilliant agent who’s a canine however is absolutely dangerous at math?”

This explicit query got here from Pierce’s son, Sam. She jotted it down a number of years in the past, together with different attention-grabbing questions he’s requested by means of the years, and posed it to her intermediate poetry college students at Mississippi State College in the beginning of a latest class.

“My questions get weirder and weirder. As we speak was just like the weirdest one but,” she stated. “To their nice credit score, they only rolled with it.”

The inventive spirit Pierce brings to the classroom additionally serves her properly whereas writing. She’s Mississippi’s present poet laureate and co-director of the inventive writing program at MSU, the place she tries to share her information and love of poetry with others.

“I believe poems work greatest once they come from a spot of openness and willingness to strive issues versus having to really feel like ‘I’ve to do precisely this, and if I don’t do it precisely this fashion, then it’s not going to be any good,’” Pierce stated.

She feels poets ought to be “conscious of and open to the thrill and pleasures of language.”

“Finally, writing ought to be a pleasure not directly,” Pierce stated.

From an early age, Pierce learn something she may get her arms on.

“I all the time actually loved phrases, whether or not they had been in poems or not,” Pierce stated. “Language, basically, is all the time one thing that was magical to me.”

Pierce grew up in Delaware and lived there till she went to varsity. In second grade, her class realized about haiku, a sort of quick kind poetry that originated in Japan.

“I keep in mind simply being so delighted with it,” she stated. “It was a lot enjoyable to have the ability to make an image out of phrases.”

She’s written poems and tales ever since.

Her profession in poetry and educating occurred organically.

She majored in English with a inventive writing emphasis throughout her undergraduate research at Susquehanna College in Pennsylvania, adopted by an MFA in poetry from Ohio State College and, ultimately, a Ph.D. from the College of Missouri.

Throughout her time at Ohio State, she labored as a educating assistant. Though early in life, Pierce didn’t plan on turning into a trainer — it wasn’t even on her radar — as quickly as she stepped into the classroom as an teacher, she knew she wished to maintain doing it.

As a trainer, certainly one of Pierce’s nice joys is sharing poetry with college students she affectionately calls “poetry skeptics” — those that suppose they don’t like or simply don’t get poetry. Or perhaps they’ve been advised “that is what you need to do with a poem” and really feel as if they’ll’t crack the code.

Today, Pierce teaches an introductory inventive writing class overlaying poetry and fiction at MSU, together with higher degree poetry courses like intermediate poetry and craft of poetry.

She and her husband, Michael Kardos, moved to Starkville to work at Mississippi State in 2007. Together with Pierce, Kardos serves as co-director of MSU’s inventive writing program and can also be a fiction professor. The couple has two sons, 11-year-old Sam and 8-year-old Wyatt.

In her courses, Pierce walks college students by means of modern poems, pulling them aside to look inside on the methods language and pictures are getting used, all of the whereas eager about the various functions poetry can serve.

In upper-level courses, Pierce focuses on serving to college students develop their aesthetic bravery as they’re writing and take into consideration their very own voices as writers. She helps them uncover what they’re drawn to and what type they naturally gravitate towards.

Between educating and elevating a household, there are days when Pierce is simply too busy to take a seat down and write.

“There are days after I plan forward to prioritize the writing, and there are days after I plan forward and say, ‘That is the day when I’m simply grading pupil work and taking my youngsters to dentist appointments,‘” Pierce stated.

It’s all about discovering the precise stability. Giving herself permission to have non-writing days helps her to focus her consideration solely on writing when the time comes.

Pierce has discovered that educating poetry helps along with her personal writing. Class discussions hyperlink with what she’s writing and vice versa.

“I attempt to make educating as a lot of a dialog as it may be,” Pierce stated. “We’re all figuring issues out.”

Since Pierce moved to Mississippi 15 years in the past, the state’s pure magnificence has crept into her writing.

“I’m actually drawn to the lushness of Mississippi and the depth of the pure world right here,” Pierce stated. “All the things is type of dialed as much as 11 by way of the character in Mississippi.”

On walks along with her youngsters and their canine, Roxy, Pierce pays shut consideration to the seasons, the flowers on the bushes and the birdsong resonating overhead. From the scale of the bugs to the fast progress of lawns in spring, Pierce has a watch for nature. However she’s significantly interested by climate and local weather.

Her third e-book is titled “The Twister is the World,” and her most up-to-date e-book, “Hazard Days,” is a group of poetry to “rejoice our planet whereas additionally bearing witness to its collapse.”

“Like lots of people dwelling right here, it’s one thing that’s on my thoughts lots,” Pierce stated of the climate, which has more and more affected her day-to-day life, because it has the lives of all Mississippians.

In April 2021, Pierce was named Mississippi’s poet laureate. In that honorary place, she’ll function an envoy for poetry and the literary arts within the state by means of 2025.

“Poetry is for everybody” serves as a mission assertion of kinds for her work.

“My objective is to attempt to improve entry to poetry for individuals in Mississippi in methods which might be significant for them,” Pierce stated. “I need to shine a lightweight on a variety of poems, poets and writers basically that we’ve got within the state, that we’ve had within the state. We’ve got such an unbelievable literary panorama right here and I believe it’s actually inspiring for individuals to learn about that.”

As a part of her position as poet laureate, Pierce hosts The Mississippi Poetry Podcast. Every episode contains a totally different Mississippi poet — like Aimee Nezhukumatathil or C. Liegh McInnis — studying a poem, sharing what impressed them to jot down it and providing recommendation for aspiring poets.

Every 15-minute episode is paired with a supplemental useful resource for educators and group teams.

“The podcasts are meant to be pleasant, enjoyable and vigorous and to assist everybody, however particularly youthful individuals in our state, see that poetry is being written by Mississippians,” Pierce stated. “Poetry is for everybody.”

She additionally writes a month-to-month column referred to as “Poetry Break,” with a objective of offering individuals with instruments to strive their hand at writing poetry.

“Loads of instances, individuals really feel reduce off from poetry or suppose ‘Effectively, it’s probably not one thing that I need to strive or it’s not one thing that I actually ought to strive. I’m not going to be any good at it,’” Pierce stated. “I believe numerous instances, all individuals want is a observe to run on. They only want a spot to begin.”

Pierce can also be working with Tracy Carr, deputy director of library companies for the Mississippi Library Fee, to place collectively “poetry walks” for libraries in Mississippi the place individuals can stroll exterior and browse a poem whereas doing so.

Pierce describes it as “a approach to get poetry out into individuals’s on a regular basis lives in order that it doesn’t really feel like one thing that’s in a dusty e-book on a very tall shelf.”

Poetry is in every single place, she stated, for many who merely look and hear.

“It’s one thing that’s proper right here; it’s for all of us,” she stated. “It’s within the backyard after we’re strolling, it’s within the newspaper; and it’s simply round.”

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