Artbeat prose & poetry

The IUSB creative writers put on a brief sweet show at Artbeat this year.  There were four of them, a formidable pack.  None was too untalented or long-winded or ungracious or soft-spoken to belong to this refreshing bunch, this faculty foursome.  All were, in other words, together in being talented, economical, gracious and well-spoken.  

It's true that value here is being placed on brevity.  Whereas some creative writers will pound their audiences with their mediocre output, here concision meant that the ADHD-addled masses - in which I include myself - were given an opportunity to really listen.  

Reading for less than ten minutes apiece, each writer offered up a handful of little jewels and thus exposed the strength of their department.  Lucky IUSB students!  Not every English department can boast of such a talented faculty pack.  A department might have one important or formerly important or somewhat important someone to trot out for special occasions, it's true.  In this case, the talent is young, trots itself out even for smallish audiences and, most impressively, is actively publishing.

Here are the creative writers of the IUSB English Department, along with a selected quote from their creative oevre:

KELCEY PARKER, fiction writer
www.kelceyparker.com
iusbcreativewriting.wordpress.com/

Without hair my daughter was a new life form.  Everyday she came home from school with a group of small people orbiting her.  Every day she and her galaxy of friends would create a new image on her head. A snow globe.  A tennis ball, basketball, soccer ball. An ice cream sundae. A Siberian tiger.
(From "Fortnight in D Minor," short story.)

DAVID DODD LEE, poet
seventeenfingeredpoetrybird.blogspot.com
howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2010/08/david-dodd-lee.html

You can pull a bluegill out a pike’s ass, it might
still swim away. I’m not talking about pumpkinseeds,
those little flecks of tinsel. The bluegill’s
the stud of all panfish. People catch pumpkinseeds
thinking they’re bluegills.
(From "A Poem About Bluegills")

CLAYTON MICHAELS
claytonmichaelspoetry.wordpress.com
watermarkpoems.com

Now when I say trust it
sounds like gun;
when I say love it sounds
like mycosis.
(From "anodyne")

NANCY BOTKIN

The sink is gurgling, whispering
the names of the dead....

My mind turns to things that began 
in water and have come up
bigger, hungrier, and without shame.
(From “Looking at the Drain”)