RACHEL BENEWAY
Special to The Leader
Poems filled with tales of dinosaurs, stories of mime camps, architecture gone wrong, romance built upon Mountain Dew: these were some of the pieces shared among a large crowd in McEwen 202 on Thursday. Matthew Olzmann was the first writer this semester to visit Fredonia for the Mary Louise White Visiting Writers series.
Olzmann is originally from Detroit, Michigan, and this was his first time visiting Fredonia. His poems have appeared in many established journals including Kenyon Review, New England Review, Gulf Coast and The Southern Review. Presently, he is the poetry editor and co-editor-in-chief of The Collagist, a literature journal published monthly..
“This past spring there was a conference in Boston for all writers around the country and, when I attended his big presentation, that’s when I cemented, ‘Yeah, this guy needs to come to Fredonia,’” said Aimee Nezhukumatathil, director of the Visiting Writers Program. “His name preceded him,” she continued.
After enjoying a sandwich at Upper Crust Bakery & Soup Co., Olzmann came to campus dressed casually in jeans and a black button up to lead a craft talk and read some of his work among many excited students and teachers.
Olzmann began his craft talk with a quirky childhood memory; he spoke about how his scientifically keen brother finds the idea of Spiderman highly unlikely. He managed to tell the story in a funny, light-hearted manner, while he effectively made the point that people don’t always accept or believe what is logical.
“I think one of the main reasons professor Gerkensmeyer and I wanted to bring him here is that with his poems, you don’t really need a dictionary along- side them—you tend to read them and enjoy them,” said Nezhukumatathil. “His poems bring so much delight and joy and light to places and topics that are usually seen as sort of dark or alienating in some ways, shape or form. So it’s not that he colors everything and pretends everything is rosey, he takes a balanced look at bringing the light into places that are seemingly dark.”
“I tend to be interested in what I don’t know,” Olzmann said. He uses this idea to tie in many other thoughts of his that inspire his writing, along with the concepts of belief and absurdity. He discussed his interesting writing method where he places a heavy emphasis on asking questions to inspire his work.
He then read two poems: “Later, People Took on Qualities that Planets Usually Have” by Rebecca Wadlinger and “The Quiet World” by Jeffery McDaniel.
“The poems are surprising but they search for something with even greater resonance,” Olzmann stated about these two poems that he examined and used to provide inspiration. “What I admire about these poems is how, by accepting and heightening their initial odd premises, the poems develop these quirky little allegories. They use the absurd to tell us something about what it means to be human.”
“I’m fascinated by the concepts of belief and disbelief,” stated Olzmann. He then used this idea to guide a writing prompt for the audience. In this prompt he asked the audience to write in an improv-style based on something that is impossible. He used the question, “If this is true, else is true?” to guide writers in a certain direction.
After ten minutes of writing, he asked the audience if anyone would share their work. A handful of students bravely volunteered.
“I thought they were really wonderful; they were really imaginative, original and none were anything alike each other so they were a lot of fun to hear,” stated Olzmann about the responses he received from the writing prompt. “There were a lot of people who seemed really enthusiastic. It was an honor to be able to be able to talk to an audience like that,” Olzmann continued.
After listening to the volunteers’ work, he encouraged the audience to ask questions. He answered inquiries about where he got the inspiration for certain poems in his book, Mezzanines, and the story behind the cover-art and title of his book.
The craft talk ended and a short break followed. At 7 p.m. Olzmann was back in the same room for another session, this time he was reading his own work.
“It’s been a lot of fun getting to know and talk to a couple students and to have the chance to interact with people at the craft talk, answer some questions and meet people in between the two events,” Olzmann said.
He read a variety of his work that was featured in Mezzanines as well as pieces from other collections of his work. His readings were clearly well received; when reading his poems, laughter among the audience was not uncommon. The ways in which he presented his poems were very witty and enthusiastic, yet it was impossible not to notice the humble- ness Olzmann expressed in every piece.
“I thought it was great. He brought a lot of life into the poems, you might not have seen otherwise. I thought the audience loved it—he’s not a dry poet,” said Jeff Wilkinson, junior English major and intern to the Visiting Writers Program, while standing in line to get his copy of Mezzanines signed.
He ended the second session once again by taking questions from the audience. Students were eager to ask him about his publication process and why he decided to become a writer, among an assortment of other topics.
“He started writing because he loved reading and that’s ultimately what I want our students to get, is that they need to be good readers first, before they have any hopes or dreams of becoming a good writer,” stated Nezhukumatathil.