Spotlight on...Michael Collier

Author: Bri Cavallaro

Visiting Professor of English Michael Collier is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (BLWC), teaches English at the University of Maryland, College Park and was named the Poet Laureate of Maryland in 2001. His books of poetry include The Ledge (2000), The Neighbor (1995), The Folded Heart (1989) and The Clasp and Other Poems (1986). Collier is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and NEA fellowships. Collier taught a poetry workshop at the college over Jterm and is currently teaching a modern poetry course.



The Middlebury Campus: What circumstances led you to Middlebury for the year? Just a specific interest in these courses?

Michael Collier: Well, I've had an association with the BLWC for over twelve years, and I've always wondered what it'd be like to be here over the wintertime - to teach here at the college - especially after I've had such wonderful students from Middlebury over the years. I've had lots of friends in this community, in the writing department, and it's wonderful to work with them.



TC: What differences, if any, do you find between Middlebury undergrads and other undergrad and grad students you've worked with?

MC: Maryland's a public university, and the range of students is much broader. It's much more difficult to get into Middlebury, and so the students are kind of higher-end than they are at Maryland. The students here also have a familiarity with literature that a good sixty percent of the students at Maryland don't. The curiosity level is about the same. At Maryland, there is just a wider spectrum. Graduate students are quite different - they come from all over the country and they've done really well wherever they've been as undergrads. We actually have a Middlebury grad studying poetry right now [at Maryland]. In this Modern Poetry class I'm teaching, students are much more active in discussion. There are plenty of opinions and there is a kind of eagerness. I think it has to do with the fact that most Midd students were the best in their class and were used to talking, that they've developed a habit of participation. It's great. It's fun. We get to penetrate more deeply into what we're talking about. Almost everyone is working at the same level.



TC: What do you think an aspiring writer at Middlebury can get out of the Breadloaf Conference? What are your thoughts on writing conferences at Breadloaf - do you think an undergraduate student can really get a lot out of it?

MC: I think this leads to a bigger question, that of the use of writing conferences at all. I think that Middlebury college students have a pretty good experience at Breadloaf for a couple of reasons. The first is that they're comfortable with the landscape, if not the actual structure of the courses. The other is that there are enough of them [students who attend Breadloaf] here - there are between either eight or nine - that they can create a little subgroup even if they are dispersed among the workshops. One thing people get out of workshops, though, is insight into what it means to be a writer, what it means to make your life into a life that's dedicated to writing. It comes in a couple forms, not just in the case of specific things you have to do, but in terms of the level of passion and energy and dedication.



TC: Do you think being around other writers fosters that?

MC: Yes, and I think people will talk about how that's the sort of thing they get out of a writer's conferences. That sense of community is one of the most important things that a writer could get out of a conference. They establish writing conferences that will get them through tough times, they'll exchange information about what they're reading. There's also the intensity of the experience, being exposed to lectures by faculty and craft classes and social opportunities. All of those things are intensely stimulating. The best is when people get something that they couldn't expect. If that happens, it's very exciting for them. I think Middlebury students can be nervous before they come up [to Breadloaf], but the teachers are very good and used to working with a wide range of students and I've found that in the years of working with Midd students, that they usually hold their own. They shouldn't be nervous on whether they could fit in.



TC: I know you read a couple poems from your new collection at a recent reading. Would you like to talk a little bit about where they came from?

MC: The inspiration for the poems comes from grief, I suppose, from losing friends who had died from, let's say, 1998 to about 2003. There was a big cluster of my friends who died. The poems were in response to that; it was a way of facing the grief I had buried - of examining it. It really came through in dream imagery, and when I wasn't working with dreams, it seems like birds and bird imagery were there to be avatars or a kind of connection to the dream world. Writing this book was unlike the other four books in that I didn't think consciously to what I was doing; I was mostly responding to images and rhythms, and I noticed afterward that so many had to do with words, so many were literal elegies for friends. It's an extended elegy.