by Rebecca Doverspike

True to tradition, the weather provided a blustering cold backdrop for the Council of Writer’s Fall Formal Reading on Friday, December 6th. As MFAs, literature students, friends, and faculty gathered in Colson 130, I had the sense that we filled the room, but quietly—a fullness of presence, ready to listen.

We gave this reading a comic book theme, revealing each reader’s inherent superpower. Third year fiction writer Nathan Holmes put together this utterly fantastic program that illustrates not only superhero names but also a narrative itself (amazing, Nathan!). Click here to fill your eyes with imaginative wonder. And hey, only $0.10 a copy.

Troy Copeland, a third year nonfiction author, MC’d this event, introducing each reader with a tone that combined mysticism and earthiness (not unlike his own writing). And so, before any of us even stepped up to the podium to share our words, we were all but adorned in capes, cloaks, and invisible shields. I’m now convinced there’s no other way to give a reading.

From Feagin Jones, swooping in to rescue a last-minute reading switch, the Ursa Warrior (she can shift to bear on command; no moon needed), we heard a biography of her relationship with poetry. We heard about Wordsworth and God and the way poetry spins above but is also close, close enough to touch, and change, one’s very blood.

From Claire Fowler, the Miraculous Moon Mover, we heard from a nonfiction piece titled after an Isaac Asimov short story (“Nightfall”) in which the narrator threads astrology and science through an attentive, undefined116122.undefined116123.undefined116124.undefined116731.undefined213152.documented, experience at a psychiatric hospital. This essay was chosen to represent WVU in the AWP Intro. Competition (yay, Claire!).

Sara Lucas, a featured reader, who can sing her way through anything and play any instrument she touches, read from her novel in which a character, Marcie, bakes something delicious with words sweet enough to make our stomachs grumble and feel the warmth of a lit kitchen somewhere on that cold evening.

Melissa Ferrone, the Wondrous Wave Disruptor, read from her essay, “Linton Hall Elegy,” soon to be published in The Fourth River’s Women & Nature Issue, in which she puts an astounding amount of things in relation to one another—birds, nuns, school girls, drawings, prayers. She even wonders what Christ’s favorite bird was. Who has wondered that before? It felt like one of those questions that seemed at once natural and utterly profound, at once commonplace and yet opening new thoughts to the world.

After a chatty intermission in which we enjoyed some potluck sweets, we began the second half with our second featured reader, poet Christina Seymour (another AWP Intro. Competition representative), who can turn into whatever she touches.

Christina seemed very close to her work. She read about wonder, loneliness, longing (“one cannot marry a river”). She put in one line something I’d tried to write paragraphs about before (that’s what poets do), about being told not to stare into the sun as a child and doing it anyway—the blank spots in vision after. Fireflies flickered in a poem, too, showing us Christina’s vision in all kinds of light.

Next, Sadie Shorr-Parks, who can freeze time! People want to paint her because she can hold so still. She read us a narrative about babysitting her younger brother. Very Sadie, the piece made us laugh and made its way to truth through a quirky and entertaining route. She makes fun of the world, and herself, in such a way that allow truths to surface.

Jacqulyn Wilson, the Unrivaled Roar of Radiance (indeed!) read us beautiful poems. Angels made an appearance in the poems—one time as taking someone into their presence, and another as a speaker’s wish for them to be rattling at the door instead of her neighbor. An image remains of a flower vase the speaker wanted to keep upon a breakup, and a last moment of holding hands before parting. These poems swooped in with importance, much like angels might.

The Impressionable Prism, Hannah McPherson, read from an essay, “Houses: Four Ways,” in which some she articulated the ways some homes are physical structures with walls and others are inside, spiritual. She read to us her perceptions of the relationship between different kinds of houses in Turkey and America, in other people’s lives, and her family’s. It gave us pause to reflect on what’s interior, what’s exterior, and where we situate ourselves within shifting notions (shall we say prisms?) of home.

Our last featured reader, Rebecca Doverspike (me), the Indefatigable (ha) Dazzler read from an essay she wrote her first semester of graduate school but is in the process of revising for her thesis. “First Communion” sees the wafer in Catholic communion as the moon brought to earth, Christ in the form of solidified light that dissolves. This essay speaks to her relationship with her grandmother and Catholicism and writing, too (this is why the structure shifted from chronology to collage, to allow those parts their own space to bloom and relate rather than clutter the reader’s head).

Shaun Turner, the Amazing Atom Splitter, cut through the invisible atoms in the air with his two flash fiction pieces that got right to the core of things. Nothing stills a room like a first sentence in which someone gets shot in the head while sunbathing. And yet, this is the world in which we find ourselves; Shaun showed it to us through characters with clarity. One of Shaun’s stories was chosen to represent WVU’s AWP Intro. Competition). Woot!

There’s a reason I put Troy Copeland, the thundering tempest who can call forth the winds, last on the program: he’s a tough act to follow. He must’ve gathered some of that wind before he began a phenomenal reading from one of his early essays in the program, “Echoes to the Senses.” He read rhythmically, intellectually, and genuinely about words’ role in performance and identity. Troy’s writing is very intellectual, but he never leaves his readers behind—always he considers us, brings us with (“In imagining that, you have entered the gulf with me,” where “that,” is a man of African descent standing knee-deep in the ocean reading aloud from Tennyson. And later, “that,” becomes the knowledge of being one drop of that ocean and also the spaces between). We journeyed with, through his sentences, to find, at the end, a graceful articulation of the space between words, and how we are all connected through that space. I could feel that connection palpably between the people in the room as his reading ended. From one mind’s thoughts and perceptions of being alive to a collective consciousness of that phenomena. It left us grateful.

Thank you to all who came to listen to this reading (so good to fill the room!) and stay tuned for another volume of MFA Reading in the Spring.

Photos of the Featured Readers below are courtesy of Christina Seymour:

Sara Lucas, leaving us hungry for more after reading from her novel.

Christina Seymour, gracing us with her poems.

Rebecca Doverspike, relating her hesitation in sentences with nearly not arriving in the world.