Lakeland Mirror

Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Jim Giese Stacey Harwood (left) and David Lehman: this year's featured writers.

Media Credit: Jim Giese Lisa Vihos listens intently to a poem.

Media Credit: Jim Giese Karl Elder reads from "Gilgamesh at the Bellagio" in the Pub.

The Great Lakes Writers Festival comes around only once a year, and this year, two outstanding poets took the showground. David Lehman and Stacey Harwood illustrated their works, filled with odd and quirky descriptions, in the Bradley Fine Arts Building and later in the Pub, on Thursday, Nov. 5.

The annual event was hosted by Fessler Professor of Creative Writing Karl Elder and several of Lakeland's students helped organize the event.

The Great Lakes Writers Festival was a great way to interact with professional writers, and it (GLWF) provided an excellent opportunity for writers to share their work with their peers and learn from professionals.

The event held in the Bradley Fine Arts Theater was a convocation credit for students, and more than one hundred students and members of the community were in attendance. Junior writing major Brittney Sandberg kicked off the event when she introduced Harwood, "a poet who happens to be a policy analyst."

Harwood is an accomplished poet who had her poem "Contributors' Notes" published in "The Best American Poetry 2005", an annual poetry anthology.

Harwood began the afternoon by reciting many of her poems which vary in theme from age to curiosity to young people kissing on a subway. She even recited an "Ode to the Comma", her favorite punctuation mark. That was one of the best poems I heard that morning.

Lehman also got a great reception from the audience.

Senior education and writing major Rob Pockat introduced Lehman and the crowd fell in love with his calm and tranquil demeanor. While Lehman read his poems, the audience reacted to every single word he uttered.
My personal favorite Lehman had recited was "The Difference between Coke and Pepsi". He read, "Won't admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind/numerous marital infidelities;/Looks fat in jeans, mouth clichés with confidence."

Later that night, both Lehman and Harwood did a reading in the Pub. The event started with a small food gathering where the authors could mingle with students and professors.

Elder introduced Harwood, and she read a couple of her poems to the crowd. Midway through the evening, Lehman and Harwood read a poem in collaboration.

I noticed that when Harwood was reading a poem, she would occasionally look at Lehman. It was not a bad look but a look of fondness; later that night I learned that the two were husband and wife. This piece of information helped me understand more about their writings.

The couple read two poems that were responses from one to the other. Lehman read a poem called "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" and Harwood read one named "The Nymphs Reply". Each poem complimented the other well and produced a wonderful piece when combined.

Some other great poetry was read that evening, and members of the Lakeland College faculty even read their poetry. Lisa Vihos, director of alumni relations, read a poem, "Advice Dyslexic", that is being published in "Seems", a literary magazine published by Elder. And Elder read several poems that were published in his most recent book "Gilgamesh at the Bellagio".

Throughout the evening, laughter overshadowed the movement surrounding the Pub. This event drew members from all sorts of places. As always, the faculty was present and fellow students filled in the seats, but people from outside of Lakeland joined in. In fact, the crowd contained two high school students from Washburn, Wis. who made the seven hour trip to attend the festival. These two students wrote a grant to their city to help them with hotel bills and other expenses to make it to the two day event.

"I thought it was going to be good but it turned out to be amazing," said Jake Liphart (sophomore in high school).

Liphart said there are not many writers in Washburn to speak to and get information from, so the high school students really enjoyed meeting so many writing majors and professors during the two day event.

Harwood and Lehman hosted writing workshops on Thursday and Friday. The workshops consisted of writing exercises that did not seem like exercises but were more like games. Lehman instructed his participants to write a paragraph in which the last line needed to be "And there it was-the red jacket."

The workshops had an atmosphere of encouragement and people's fears were reduced enough to allow everyone to share a piece of their own.

The second exercise the participants did was to write down acronyms using their first and last name. Then the participants wrote a poem using these words.

"This seems more like alchemy," said Vihos, who attended a workshop.

At the end of the workshop everyone had a hard time letting both Lehman and Harwood leave. Their short time here was filled with excitement and awe over their writing, and even though they were only here for a short while, their influence was greatly felt.

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