By Kevin Cooley
Contributing Writer
Words arranged deliberately have the power to entrance masses.
The English Department’s Writers Series proved this claim, as two more professional writers read their works on campus within a week of one another.
Gregory Betts, a contemporary Canadian poet, performed selections of his work in the Dresser Auditorium April 19. Many of his poems make use of a revolutionary technique called “plundering,” in which the poet removes select portions of well-known poems to give birth to entirely new pieces.
Kaplan Harris, associate professor of English, invited Betts to speak on campus.
“(Betts) brought contemporary poetics to the campus,” Harris said. “It was the kind of poetry that is sometimes neglected in the United States but has thriving readership in Canada.”
Betts stressed the tendency of his poems to challenge individual authorship, or the idea that an author is solely responsible for his or her own work. He uses methods such as collaborative poem writing and plundering to show the compound origins of poetry. Betts read from a collection of 150 poems, entitled “The Others Raised in Me,” which he plundered from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 150.”
“I absolutely adore some of the newer experimental poetry,” said Andrea Westerlund, an English graduate student. “The idea of plunder verse is so exciting. The definitions of poetry — the forms, the rules, the standards — are literally breaking down before our very eyes. We are so incredibly lucky to be able to witness the things that are happening right now.”
While Betts’ innovative style may have brought a worldly perspective to the campus, the next writer in the series strikes a much more familiar chord with St. Bonaventure students.
Devin Murphy, ‘00, read several of his short stories on campus yesterday.
Murphy received his master’s degree from Colorado State University and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His stories have been published in The Missouri Review, South Dakota Review and The Greensboro Review, according to a university press release.
“I’m looking forward to this jam-tastic experience with another writer, a Bona alumni and a former Bona rugby player,” said Steven Kuzara, a junior English major, before Murphy’s reading.
Rick Simpson, a professor of English who reached out to Murphy, claimed Murphy’s experience is his primary gift to Bonaventure students.
“This is one of our really interesting graduates across the board,” Simpson said. “Devin’s got a double edge; he’s a Bonaventure graduate and a creative writing expert. He can speak directly to creative writing students who are interested. He will have no problem bringing this expertise back to our students.”
Simpson also expressed his appreciation for the collaborative efforts of the English department in making the series of talks a reality.
“It’s extremely cool — you love to see it when a bunch of people can work together to make something like this possible,” Simpson said. “I hope to see this kind of thing continue here.”
Westerlund said she hopes the presence of these writers on campus will prompt Bonaventure students to appreciate creative writing and the arts on a deeper level.
“I hope that this speaker series continues to remind students that these are still worthwhile endeavors and that the humanities begin to regain the attention they truly deserve,” she said.
cooleykj10@bonaventure.edu
