blueprints

122 | thomas lux
As you probably have gathered from the above, Poetry@Tech evolved
through trial and error, hard work, luck, and the simple reality that here was
a place where a university-based poetry program, with an outreach element,
didn’t exist. It felt like a hole to fill. We didn’t know how many other
people even knew or cared there was a hole to be filled, but we were going
to try to fill it anyway, one shovelful at a time.
In addition to traditional poetry readings, we’ve tried many other
things. We had a poetry festival, geared for kids as well as adults, with stiltwalkers,
fire-eaters, clowns. We’ve had two major spoken word performances.
Some of our McEver Visiting Chair holders are spoken-word artists.
We had a program of readings by physicians who are poets. We had a
program of three young poets from the UK. We had Patricia Smith perform
with her band Bop Thunderous. We combined poetry and music in other
ways, most memorably, for me, Kurtis Lamkin (who was on the same program
as Gerald Stern and Mary Karr) playing a handmade (by Kurtis) kora,
a West African stringed instrument, and reciting his poems.
In the past year, through a student’s suggestion and help, we put most of
our readings on YouTube (or Tube Face or something like that). Some readings
are on university radio and TV stations. I think, generally, it’s a good
idea to try to figure out how young people, college students, communicate
via the Internet, texting, and so on and ask them for help, ideas, on how to
get the news out: poetry exists and is thriving at Georgia Tech! I’m shameless:
sometimes, after thanking people after a reading, I’ll say to the young
men in the audience (after admitting it’s a bit sexist), “Dudes, chicks dig
poetry, it’s a cheap date, she might end up thinking you’re sensitive.”
Our theory is this: if you can bring them to water, some will drink; some
will even want to taste more of this particular water! From the beginning,
however, we operated on the basic principle of inclusion, which, of course,
started with the great generosity of the Bournes and Bruce McEver. We
were determined to honor their generosity by sharing it with Tech students
and any members of the larger Atlanta community who wanted to take part.
All kinds of poets and poetry, room for all kinds of poets and poetry.
By now “we” includes, crucially, Ken Knoespel, a senior member of our
department, who later became department chair and is now interim dean.
Poetry@Tech is under the auspices of Ivan Allen College (named for the
great mayor of Atlanta during the turbulent ’60s), Georgia Tech’s liberal arts
college. The specific department is called LCC: literature, communication,
and culture. About a decade ago, a new major was created at Tech called