Last fall, poet and Hillsdale alumna Kjerstin Kauffman came as a visiting writer to share her poetry with students. Now, she’s teaching them how to write it.
Every Monday, Kauffman ’08 drives from Valparaiso, Indiana to teach a three hour seminar. In addition to learning directly from her, students in the class write poetry every week, review each other’s work, read essays on poetry, and memorize poems.
“Learning poetry is a lot like playing a musical instrument,” Kauffman said. “You practice a lot. Yes, there are gifted geniuses, but the best way to learn poetry is through constant practice. Only here of course, your instrument is words, not, say, the violin.”
Kauffman herself practiced poetry since long before she became a well-known poet. During her senior year at Hillsdale she wrote a 50-page collection of poems as her thesis. She then went on to study at Johns Hopkins University, where she received a Master of Fine Arts.
Kauffman said starting a family while still actively writing poetry has forced her to become a more disciplined writer.
“When I went through my MFA program, I wrote for deadlines,” she said. “But I was also writing about intense life experiences — like childbirth — and all these things were happening at same time.”
Former professor of English Daniel Sundahl, who was Kauffman’s thesis director in college, said Kauffman’s experiences as a mother, as a woman, and as a poet have shaped shape her style and the sort of poetry she has written since she graduated Hillsdale.
“Her writing now has lost that academic flare which tended toward abstraction,” he said. “Because she’s a mother and a wife the poems now own a lovely domestic and warmly feminine touch.”
Kauffman attributes her growth to the fact that she is always practicing poetry.
“A lot of poets say, ‘I’m not myself if I’m not writing,’” she said. “I am surprised to find that I’m writing even when I say I’m not writing. I look back over journals from times when I didn’t think I was really writing and find that I really was, even if was just a little bit every day.”
Kauffman’s discipline as writer carries over into how she teaches her class. Junior Brigette Hall said Kauffman stresses the importance of poetic forms.
“The key to this class is learning how to write formal poetry,” Hall said. “Many people think writing in meter is archaic and out of its time, but Professor Kauffman believes it’s important to maintain traditions, especially traditional formal poetry.”
Hall also said her experiences in the class itself have taught her more about the importance of the poet’s duty to relate ideas to an audience.
“Getting feedback from peers and a poet has been super helpful,” she said. “You can know how to use musical language and be able to discern the importance of everyday things, but you need to make sure that the reader understands what you’re saying. And I think that’s what the workshop does.”
Junior Chandler Ryd said the class has helped him value poetry as more than just an object for analysis.
“We’re not being tested on any of these things. We’ll do some writing assignments, but the main purpose really is to become better poets, so the emphasis is on writing poetry itself,” he said. “It opens it up for more of a contemplation rather than an analysis of the things we read.”