By Elliott Nace | Staff Writer
The annual Beall Poetry Festival will feature lectures and discussions from poets Victoria Chang, Carl Phillips and Christian Wiman, student-made exhibits across a wider swath of campus and an award ceremony commemorating the winners of a student literary contest in both poetry and fiction.
The festival will take place March 19-21 at Carroll Science Hall and the Armstrong Browning Library.
Dr. Ginger Hanchey, senior lecturer in English and undergraduate program director for literature and creative writing, said that the lectures and displays set up for the event harken back to poetry being an expression of the individual and one of the earliest human disciplines.
“When we do fun things with poetry that hopefully give delight to people across campus, our goal is to give delight and to help people feel connected,” Hanchey said. “We’re really thinking about the root of poetry, which is human connection.”
Hanchey mentioned her students’ exhibits in her “How Poetry Changes the World” course as well as the direction given by poet and Beall Poetry Festival director Dr. Chloe Honum, and how they set the stage for the event at large.
“The Beall Poetry Festival brings in the very best poets who are writing today,” Hanchey said. “It is an incredible opportunity for our students to come into contact with these people who have mastered the craft, who are doing really innovative new things with words and art.”
Waco senior Jacquelyn Franz, a student contributing to the festival, explained how the “Poetry Pharmacy” exhibit she worked on encloses poems, which resemble cough drops, in small glass bottles.
“Each [cough drop] is coordinated to an emotion that you’re feeling that day,” Franz said. “So if you come to our table and you’re feeling sad or anxious or tired, you can get a poem that kind of corresponds to that feeling. It’s supposed to help you lighten up your day a little bit.”
According to Franz, the festival’s blend of veteran insight from established poets and student input acts as an example for the university, showing poetry is a sharing of experiences between youthful and veteran thinkers alike.
“Poetry is something that doesn’t have to be formal or something that doesn’t have to be academic in a classroom, and it doesn’t have to be in a strict form,” Franz said.
Hanchey said she looks forward to hearing about the poets’ attitudes toward composition. She expressed admiration for the poets’ prose, particularly Phillips’ analysis of the impact of lifestyle on poetry and the struggles of faith expressed in Wiman’s essay collection “My Bright Abyss.”
“I love getting to hear [the poets] talk about their lives and how poetry is interwoven in their lives,” Hanchey said. “It’s not something separate, it’s something that’s part of their identity and how they understand the world that we all live in — that they’re using poetry to sort of understand these things that are happening to them.”
Franz anticipates the lectures on March 20 and 21 because of their focus on how to grow stronger as an artist.
“I’m really excited as a writer myself just to learn from them, to listen to their process and to listen to how they handle feedback, how they handle revision, how they handle writing poetry and interacting with the everyday,” she said.
