Poet & Part-Time Faculty Member Lands NEA Grant
By K. Morris
“I’ve always written to make sense of the world,” said National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grant for Literature recipient Teresa Scollon.
But finding time to write the poetry that reaches even beyond that to what Scollon believes to be its higher purpose: “making something beautiful out of our experience,” has not been easy. The receipt of the grant will allow her time to devote herself more fully to her poetry.
Scollon has always worked hard; the Interlochen resident is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern Michigan College and, until recently, was the review editor of “ForeWord Magazine,” a Traverse City- based publication with national circulation.
Contrary to the popularly held stereotype of poets as starry-eyed, lonely dreamers starving in their garrets, Scollon has background and experience in the corporate world, especially in international relations, diversity and organizational development.
“I got a degree in International Relations and Japanese at MSU because I wanted to go to Japan,” she said, “and I did a year abroad. I discovered that I was a ‘culture junkie,’ so I studied culture and diversity in the corporate workplace, got my MBA, and even had my own consulting practice for a time.”
But she never completely stopped writing, even when the pressure of her fast-paced jobs and the nature of corporate life meant that there was less time to devote to her art.
“I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write,” said Scollon of her early years. “My mom had taught me to read before I started school; she made these huge posters – about a yard long – with words like ‘mommy,’ and ‘daddy,’ on them. Later she put words on index cards, and I would line them up on the windowsill to make sentences. Reading and writing were very natural, and were always there for me.”
Scollon was trained as a classical pianist, and was accepted at the Interlochen Arts Academy for her junior and senior years of high school.
Shifting Focus
“But then I took a writing class,” she said, “and that’s where I was introduced to poetry. It was very intense – a memorable time when adults actually told the truth about what was happening in life – and I loved it. Jack Driscoll, Nick Bozanic, and the writer-in-residence at the time, Judith Minty, were inspirational and encouraging teachers.
“I think it was Jack Driscoll who said to me, ‘Half of it is stamina; you just have to keep showing up! Don’t beat yourself up if you fall away for a while – just come back!’”
Scollon kept writing on the side during college, though her studies and her curiosity about the world took her in other directions: an interest in farming led her to work on a Wisconsin farm crew for a time and found an agriculture-based non-profit.
When that didn’t survive, she became a corporate diversity director in Chicago while studying for her master’s degree in a low-residency program offered by the University of Southern Maine. When she got the invitation to be a writer-in-residence at Interlochen, she gladly accepted.
“I got to live on campus in a cabin, ate in the cafeteria and taught half-time,” she said. “I saw that having time to write and being in a writing environment made a huge difference to me, so I set out to learn what grants were available. The NEA has one of the few self-nominating grant programs out there, but it’s very competitive. I didn’t have any expectations of winning, and the requirements are stringent, but I set myself up to meet them.
Welcome Gift
“This is such a gift – to have more time to write and less worry about having to make a living,” said Scollon. “I’ll continue to teach English Composition and will be adding a Creative Writing class at NMC because I need the writing community around me. And I’ll be working on a new book of poetry.”
Scollon’s most recent work, a full-length poetry book, “To Embroider the Ground with Prayer,” will be published by Wayne State University Press in 2012. Her work has appeared in the Dunes Review, the Atlanta Review, Damselfly Press, Nimrod, Off Channel, and the Spoon River Poetry Review.
She is a frequent contributor and producer for community radio, and her chapbook, “Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game,” is a 2009 winner of the Michigan Writers Chapbook Competition.
Asked about the importance and relevance of poetry for the 21st century, Scollon acknowledged that a great many very talented poets question whether poetry is something they should be doing, given the state of the world, or whether they would make a greater contributing by becoming activists.
“I think that poetry serves to help us look at things clearly, and speak clearly about things,” she said, “and we have a real need for this. The pace of life these days is punishing, and poetry requires time, both to write it and to read it. It gives us a way to be in our body and respond to whatever is going on as whole persons.”