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PITTSBURG —
The first time Laura Lee Washburn and longtime friend Jeanne E. Clark read their poetry together, they were graduate students completing their master of fine arts degrees at Arizona State University and were part of a dual thesis defense.
“That was 21 years ago this month, and it’s kind of nice to have a joint anniversary reading,” said Washburn, now a Pittsburg State University English professor with a specialty in poetry and PSU director of creative writing.
Washburn and Clark will present their joint reading at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Governor’s Room of the Overman Student Center as part of the PSU Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. Washburn is also director of that, as well as vice director of PSU Women’s Studies, and the reading also commemorates Women’s History Month.
“When Jeanne and I were coming up, we just assumed we were feminists,” Washburn said. “Now the term has gotten kind of a bad name. I think most young women still believe in the same things we do, but they don’t call it feminism.”
“When I was in school with Jeanne, I was a kid, around 22, and had just finished undergraduate studies,” Washburn said. “Jeanne was already married, had a stepson and had worked in a program for mentally handicapped prison inmates. She was a good friend, but also somebody I felt I could learn a lot from because of her intelligence and experience.”
She added that Clark was also one of the first readers of her more mature work, and her feedback was vital.
“She understood some of the grotesqueries in my work early on and encouraged me with a gift of Diane Arbus photographs,” Washburn said. “The ‘characters’ in these photos came to inhabit quite a few of my poems, namely ‘The Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival in Maryland’ and ‘The Circus Fat Lady and Her Dog,’ which won a narrative poetry prize from ‘Poet Lore’.”
Clark is a Midwesterner who spent several years in the Southwest before joining the creative writing faculty at California State University, Chico. Her first book, “Ohio Blue Tips,” won the Akron Poetry Prize in 1997, and her most recent book is “Gorill’s Orchard.”
Clark is interested in community-based education and taught for many years in prisons, nursing homes, homeless shelters and public schools as an Artist in Education.
She is also a dedicated dog lover, according to Washburn.
The first time Laura Lee Washburn and longtime friend Jeanne E. Clark read their poetry together, they were graduate students completing their master of fine arts degrees at Arizona State University and were part of a dual thesis defense.
“That was 21 years ago this month, and it’s kind of nice to have a joint anniversary reading,” said Washburn, now a Pittsburg State University English professor with a specialty in poetry and PSU director of creative writing.
Washburn and Clark will present their joint reading at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Governor’s Room of the Overman Student Center as part of the PSU Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. Washburn is also director of that, as well as vice director of PSU Women’s Studies, and the reading also commemorates Women’s History Month.
“When Jeanne and I were coming up, we just assumed we were feminists,” Washburn said. “Now the term has gotten kind of a bad name. I think most young women still believe in the same things we do, but they don’t call it feminism.”
“When I was in school with Jeanne, I was a kid, around 22, and had just finished undergraduate studies,” Washburn said. “Jeanne was already married, had a stepson and had worked in a program for mentally handicapped prison inmates. She was a good friend, but also somebody I felt I could learn a lot from because of her intelligence and experience.”
She added that Clark was also one of the first readers of her more mature work, and her feedback was vital.
“She understood some of the grotesqueries in my work early on and encouraged me with a gift of Diane Arbus photographs,” Washburn said. “The ‘characters’ in these photos came to inhabit quite a few of my poems, namely ‘The Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival in Maryland’ and ‘The Circus Fat Lady and Her Dog,’ which won a narrative poetry prize from ‘Poet Lore’.”
Clark is a Midwesterner who spent several years in the Southwest before joining the creative writing faculty at California State University, Chico. Her first book, “Ohio Blue Tips,” won the Akron Poetry Prize in 1997, and her most recent book is “Gorill’s Orchard.”
Clark is interested in community-based education and taught for many years in prisons, nursing homes, homeless shelters and public schools as an Artist in Education.
She is also a dedicated dog lover, according to Washburn.
“Jeanne is very involved in dog rescue, including a border collie rescue group, and fosters dogs as well,” the PSU poet said. “In all her pictures, she always has a puppy.”
Washburn described her friend’s poetry as “strange and wild.”
“There is an unease in her work that balances against a deep sympathy for the people and animals she writes about,” Washburn said.
Clark has said that the voice in Washburn’s work “is like the voice of a beloved, yet sometimes cantankerous aunt standing next to you at the kitchen sink, telling you what to do as the two of you peel onions and how to clean up awards the mess that you will have made.
Laura Lee Washburn, with wit, tenderness and wisdom stands next to the reader in every poem, so when she writes poems, ‘everything stays and is felt/whether we choose to notice, amaze or worry,’ you have no real choice but to stand with her, and believe.”
Washburn’s books are “This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition” and “Watching the Contortionists,” winner of the Palanquin Chapbook Prize. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has had over 100 poems published in more than 60 magazines, anthologies or web sites.
That number is steadily growing.
“I’ve been writing a lot lately, and since the start of the year I’ve had about 12 poems accepted for publication in eight magazines or web sites,” Washburn said. “On April 7 I’ll have a poem, ‘Lily Flower Tulips,’ on the Kansas poet laureate’s blog. She’s doing 150 poems for the state’s 150th anniversary.”
Washburn has a local writers group, and said that several members and former members have also had poems on this blog, including Allison Berry, Melissa Fite, Roland Sodowsky, Olive Sullivan and Eric Dutton. The blog spot is at http://150kansaspoems.wordpress.com/tag/caryn-mirriamgoldberg/.
