Wicks Host Writers in Bisbee

NEOMFA students enjoy inspiration of the southwest

It could have been the change of scenery from the farmlands of Ohio to the hot, dry desert of Arizona, or it could have been the change from working and studying to living in the company of artists, poets and other creative individuals. Either way, the writers were inspired.

Last summer, a group of five MFA students traveled to Bisbee, Ariz., as part of a three-week summer workshop conducted by Maggie Anderson, director of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program and Kent State’s Wick Poetry Center.

The NEOMFA in creative writing was approved as a degree in the fall of 2004 with about 60 students enrolled in the program. The only consortial program of its kind in the nation, NEOMFA students from Kent State University, Youngstown State University, the University of Akron and Cleveland State gain the additional faculty and resources of all four universities throughout their studies.

The Bisbee trip, which had been in the planning stages for years, allowed the students to work together on a project while drawing inspiration from the landscape of the southwest.

“I chose the students with an eye to their differences,” Anderson says. “There was one student from each consortial university, and for what seemed to me to be a similar aesthetic sensibility. As it turned out, this was the most congenial, focused and productive workshop I have ever taught.”

The students studied with Anderson and also spent time with host Robert Wick, cofounder of the Wick Poetry Center, and his wife, who took the group on several side trips, including visits to Nogales, Mexico, and the Chiricahua mountains.

Jessica Jewell, Wick Fellow and poet from Kent State University, says the landscape of the southwest drew her in and impacted her writing.

“I am working on a sequence of poems that take place during the Dust Bowl, and issues of physical, emotional and spiritual transformations are essential knowledge for my work,” she says. “Getting the chance to go to the southwest and experience those transformations has invaluably helped my manuscript.”

Along with working, writing and traveling, the students gave a public reading to an audience of 80 individuals in Bisbee called “Monsoon Madness.”

Cathy Fahey-Hunt, graduate assistant and fiction writer at Kent State University, says the reading was not only an opportunity to share her work, but a chance to gain confidence as a writer.

“The experience has given me confidence in my work that I lacked before,” Fahey-Hunt says. “It has also given me a focus and more of a drive. After all that was given to me through the Bisbee trip, I feel I owe something back to those who gave me the experience.”

Anderson says this trip was one of the most rewarding experiences in her teaching career, and she would like take students again in the future.

“The usual classroom protocols were relaxed so that we became a group of writers working together,” she says. “As we encountered new experiences we were challenged emotionally, intellectually and even physically on our hike through the mountains, and we became more keenly aware of our strengths and resistances and of each other.

“This is invaluable information for the creative process and provides access to sources that will be available for many years. I look forward to leading another workshop next year.”

The Wick Poetry Center is a literary and educational center that provides opportunities for established and emerging poets and poetry audiences locally, regionally and nationally. The program is endowed in memory of Stan and Tom Wick, sons of Robert and Walter Wick, who were killed in separate automobile accidents seven years apart when they were both in their teens. The brothers endowed the program as a tribute to their memory and as a way of providing opportunities for talented young writers at crucial moments in their artistic development.