Commencement 2007 - Villanova University

A Poet Adept in Having Fun with Flarf, Cento, Blogging and SpamBY KATHLEEN SCAVELLODr. Justin Quinn’s advanced creativewriting class assignments did, by hisown admission, get “a bit weird.” Studentswere asked to lose, not find, their voices.They were required to write poetry usingedgy literary devices such as “flarf,” a collage-basedform of avant-garde poetry thatcombines “capture” phrases from Googlesearches, and “cento,” a technique thatassembles a poem from excerpts of otherauthors’ writings. Blogs and spam werealso mined for experimental literary treasure.And, no one in his classes walkedaway unchanged.“I joke with my students that I’mlearning more from them than they learnfrom me,” said Dr. Quinn, a visiting Irishpoet and holder of the Charles A. HeimboldJr. Endowed Chair in Irish Studiesduring the Spring Semester at VillanovaUniversity. The Heimbold Chair wasestablished by Charles A. Heimbold Jr.’54 A&S (see page 2).But, between teaching his advancedcreative writing course and a modern Irishpoetry class, it’s clear there was a whole lotof learning going on all way around.Finding a new poetic voiceWith students, “The point is not reallyto get them to stop expressing theiremotions, but to channel them in a differentway, to put them through differentdirections, different voices. For themost part, this can be very liberating,”Quinn explained.“If you sit down with a friend to talkabout your emotions, you’ll often find yourselfbeing railroaded into certain ways ofexpressing yourself. We’re often prisoners tothat kind of emotional honesty,” he added.But, most of all, in learning to becomemore creative, poets and writers need “ahealthy bit of goofing off. There has to beroom for play,” Quinn said.They also have to maintain a constantsense of wonder. Quinn, who hails originallyfrom Dublin but who now callsPrague, Czech Republic, home, has foundhis short sojourn at Villanova “endlesslyexciting.” In Prague, where he has livedfor more than a decade, he is an associateprofessor of English and American Studiesat Charles University.“I love America. It’s almost this shotof energy coming here. Just to breathe theair—it’s a different air here, the air of freedom,”Quinn said.His family, which includes his wife,Tereza Límanová, and their sons, Finbarand Manus, “get a thrill out of going tothe supermarket,” he said. “We visited theKing of Prussia Mall. It was like Americantourists going to the Eiffel Tower.”Taking his son to meet the schoolbus, “amythical object for Europeans,” has been “astrange and wonderful experience,” he added.Captivated by the styleof a Pennsylvania poetAlthough Quinn’s stint as a visiting IrishStudies professor was his first teachingexperience in the United States, he haslong been attracted to American poetryand literature. In fact, so captivated wasQuinn by the style of Wallace Stevens(1879-1957) that he wrote his doctoraldissertation on him. Quinn urges Villanovansto discover this poet from Reading,Pa., whose style he characterized as “astunning mixture of philosophy and sensuality.”His re-assessment of Stevens’ work,Gathered Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens,Nature and Community, was publishedby UCD Press in 2002.Quinn, himself a prolific poet, author,educator and lecturer, has published twocollections of poetry, Waves and Trees (2006)and Fuselage (2002) through The GalleryPress. Two other collections, The ’O’o’a’a’Bird (short-listed for the Forward Prize in1995) and Privacy (1999) were published byCarcanet. Quinn holds a bachelor’s degreein modern English and philosophy and adoctorate in American poetry from TrinityCollege, Dublin. He is fluent in Czech andreads proficiently in Irish and French.Students, compared and contrastedThe differences between European and Villanovanstudents have intrigued Quinn.“The students I taught in Prague werevery different. They’d be focused onTeaching atVillanova thisspring, Dr. JustinQuinn enlivenedhis courses withcreativity-expandingtechniques forwriting poetry. Heheld the CharlesA. Heimbold Jr.Endowed Chair inIrish Studies.English and American literature and they’dhave three or four years solid of it beforethey’d come to me. Students here comefrom the [Villanova] School of Business,biology, etc., so literature might not be atthe center of their interest. It was a challengefor me at the start [to determine] howto pitch it,” he said of his Villanova courses.Quinn also was surprised to find studentshere a bit reserved at the beginning. “Ithought American students would be muchmore vocal than European students. If theyhad nothing to say, they wouldn’t say anything.But, if they had something to say,they’d come out with it,” the poet said.American undergraduate education ismuch more varied, and Villanova has a muchstronger sense of campus life, than he finds inhis urban Prague experience, Quinn said.Asked what he thought of Villanova asa teaching institution, Quinn replied, “Ithink they’re really dedicated to it. It’llsound like I’m telling you what you wantto hear, but they really are. The degree ofattention to students is really impressive.”An Irish connection back to 1842The importance of Villanova’s Irish connectionwas made immediately apparentto Quinn after walking around the graveyardnear the St. Thomas of VillanovaMonastery.“I think anyone seeing those names willinstantly know the back stories—the parallellives between the immigrants and the peoplewho stayed at home. It just doesn’t need anyexplaining to me,” Quinn said. “It’s interestingto see the way the identification remainsso important to students here.”After touring a bit of the United Statesthis summer, Quinn will return to Prague.There, he will resume teaching at CharlesUniversity where, as at Villanova, hisstudents had best be prepared for someassignments that might just be considered“a bit weird.”