The program description for the 2010 Fall Residency is now online!
IWP TWENTYTEN
January 27th, 2010IWP Fall Residency 2009 Pt. I: The Landscape
January 26th, 2010As if winter weather advisories weren’t enough to remind us of the spoils of January, bloggers web-wide dot the i’s: inundated with Best Of lists, and anticipations of the coming State of the Union address, January doesn’t seem to exist much at all except to provide a month for looking ahead, as well as behind. And with old man winter comfortably settled across the Midwest, we look back on the year, and the residency, that was.
Part 1: The Landscape
Writers gathered in front of Shambaugh House
One week into the University’s academic semester, 36 writers from 29 countries flew halfway across the world to a region known to some as fly-over country, and others a hub of international letters.
There’s a thirty minute drive from the airport to Iowa City, on an interstate colored with near-harvest crops and prairie grasses, that for many marks the beginning to an 80-day residency one writer remarked as “truly a paradise for creative people.” Maybe he’d seen Field of Dreams. Maybe not.
The road itself isn’t altogether smooth, patched with tar in the places where the road cracked, and those sorts of bumps aren’t kind to the overall experience of riding in University vehicles. As if the twenty hours of travel weren’t enough, the high ride and easy shake of a maxivan, a different beast unto itself, isn’t exactly red carpet limo service. But then again, neither is the Cedar Rapids Airport.
Arrivals funnel through the airport’s lone terminal, and through baggage claim about the size of an end zone.
“Is this Iowa City?”
There’s heartbreak in answering this question, and a lot of heavy luggage to carry around (unless it’s been lost).
“We’ll be there soon…”
This year, Iraqi poet Soheil Najm, on his second day of travel to the states, walked out of the terminal in a pressed suit and leather shoes, like he’d only come from as far away as Chicago. His original flight had to be rescheduled due to the funeral procession of an Imam through the streets of Baghdad, causing city-wide gridlock, and he had an overnight in Istanbul before finally landing stateside in Detroit, and traveling further into the Midwest. I had Andreas Weber, novelist from Austria, along for the ride. He’d arrived that morning, sure enough, to find his luggage delayed, and looked for help at his carrier’s desk while I tended to Soheil.
“This is Iowa City?” he asked, and I had to tell him.
He took this, and his luggage, in stride, and went for a cigarette.
On the ride in, the road was pitch dark, and I told him what the landscape looked like during the day. The river to our right. Corn and soybean fields. And Andreas had a question for Soheil.
“You are a poet. I must ask what you think about this war?”
We drove the rest of the way in kind, an Austrian novelist and Iraqi poet in energetic conversation on the current situation in Baghdad, oblivious to the unsettling road bumps, and pitch black view. Hitting the ground running.
A day's hike through Redbird Farms
The early weeks of the residency saw a flurry of welcoming events and receptions more or less along the same lines, and across the backyards of countless introductions, the writers started coming alive as we now remember them; personalities, friends, citizens of the world, and charges of intellectual dynamite. Whether suited in full regalia at the home of IWP Director Christopher Merrill, or in hiking boots through the paths of Redbird Farms’ back country, the writers matched local enthusiasm for their mere presence stride for stride. As the weeks went on, a tightly-knit community formed, yielding one-of-a-kind moments that made it a true paradise to be their hosts. Even in maxivans.
joseph m. tiefenthaler
Comp Lit
January 26th, 2010Todays’ ice and snow outside my window make the peacock-rich hot-pink Jaipur Literary Festival
seem particularly appealing. Available more immediately at hand, meanwhile, is Wapsipinnicon Almanac, hand-edited, typeset in lead, resolutely local, undistracted.
Whitman
January 25th, 2010A campaign by Wieden+Kennedy for Levi’s, this highlights footage of Walt Whitman from the Walt Whitman Archive.
A Francophone’s Microphone
January 22nd, 2010For anyone (as we all are) missing Mabrouck, here’s ten minutes of his IWP adventures (in French, bien sur):
Scout work:
December 9th, 2009Here’s a project to keep track of: “Translate This Book!” Is there a title you think really ought to be translated into English? Check out the list http://quarterlyconversation.com/translate-this-book-single-page , then pitch a title of your own. Or add in Comments below!
Between the Lines 2009: Gone but never forgotten
July 27th, 2009Sadly I don’t have time to write a longer post but for now I wanted to present the BTL class of 2009, as photographed by Tarek Eltayeb, one of their teachers. And yes, they are just as cool as they look.
Top row, L to R: Iya Ghassib (Jordan), Nadia El Malt (Lebanon), Hussein Youneiss (Lebanon), Ahmad Ezery (Israel), Majd Iwidat (Palestinian Authority), Irene Ghattas (Palestinian Authority), Lora Abaza (Syria), Bana Aassy (Israel). Bottom row, L to R: Bashar Al-Sawaftah (Jordan), Nael Roby (Israel), Zaid Al-Nassir (Jordan), Yara Abou Fakher (Syria).
–Kecia Lynn
Between the lines of “Between the Lines”: One year ago today
June 12th, 2009
Take some teenagers from the Middle East and bring them to Iowa for two weeks to study creative writing alongside American teenagers. That’s Between the Lines in a nutshell. (Check out the site for details.)
It was the first year of the program, and as the coordinator, I had spent the previous six months helping to put the whole thing together. Students and chaperones had been chosen, teachers had been hired, visas and plane tickets were secured, classes and activities were scheduled, rooms were reserved and waiting.
Meanwhile, the water was rising.
I’ve spent my entire life in the Midwest, so I know what weather is. (There are those who question whether Cleveland, my childhood home, counts as “Midwest.” When it comes to weather at least, I offer two words: lake effect.) However, living in Iowa has brought new and unique weather adventures. It was here that a tornado came within half a mile of my apartment building. It was here that I first experienced a hail storm severe enough to make me fear for my windshield. It was here that I first had to buy lock de-icer. (Considering how long I lived in Chicago, I know that may sound hard to believe. Then again, things are a little more spread out here.)
The winter of 2007-2008 was the worst winter I’ve ever suffered through. When born-and-bred Iowans say it’s a bad winter, it’s a really bad winter. Imagine ice storms and snowstorms in rapid succession. Trees coated in thick ice that glittered at night and crackled during the day. Driving around what would normally be considered potholes if streets were made of ice and packed snow. (The city had run out of salt sometime in February.) Even walking was dangerous without Yaktrax or cleats; I loudly blessed the few houses with residents conscientious enough to clear their sidewalks. This record amount of precipitation kept coming after the temperatures rose above freezing. So not only did we have icemelt and snowmelt, we had rain. Lots of it. And the Iowa River bisected the campus.
First e-mail, June 11, approximately 2:30 pm: Iowa House Hotel (where our teachers were going to stay) closed indefinitely.
There are several B&Bs in the area; we’ll find someplace for them to stay. No problem.
Second e-mail, June 11, approximately 4:00 pm: The university fueling station shut down. Fortunately we already had the maxivans we needed to pick them up in Chicago.
We can still refill the maxivans at regular gas stations; we just have to use the van credit card. Simple procedure. Full steam ahead.
At approximately 2:00 pm on June 12: All youth camps canceled for the next 10 days. Dorms closed.
Eight time zones ahead, our three West Bank students were spending their last night at home, preparing to leave the next morning for Amman. Their trip would require them to pass through several checkpoints, adding time to an already long journey. They were being accompanied by the father and brother of one of the students. They would spend the night at a hotel in Amman, and then catch the June 14 flight to Chicago along with most of the rest of the group.
We had everything ready. We just needed someplace to put them all. At 6:00 pm we called the State Department and asked: Do we cancel? What do we do?
The State Department replied: Make it work.
And somehow, through the magic and power of connections both personal and electronic that I still can’t completely define, we did.
Within 24 hours we found two teachers, Danny Khalastchi and Anjali Sachdeva, who were willing to teach the English-language writing workshops. And with the help of Hull House-Chicago, we found a place to stay: the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). One of our staff members, Steve, made it over to the Rental Pool (on the other side of the river) to pick up 15 laptops and bring them to Shambaugh House before the last bridge was closed. Another staff member, Joe, was scheduled to fly to Newark to meet the two students who were traveling alone from Tel Aviv. He made it to the airport in Cedar Rapids right before Interstate 380 was shut down.
On June 14, parts of eastbound Interstate 80 were shut down as well, so we had to drive an extra hour just to get to the Illinois line. It was a mostly sunny day; in fact it looked like any summer day in June except for the various puddles, ponds, and lakes appearing where cropland used to be. They were calling it a “500-year flood,” which, I was disappointed to learn, was a mathematical rather than an historical term: This particular type and size of flood has a 1-in-500 chance of happening in any given year.
Ninety minutes into Illinois we stopped at a Wal-Mart to buy linens and towels since UIC wasn’t going to be able to get us any before Monday. Watching all the people doing what people normally do at a Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon, I had a moment of disconnect: Don’t they know there’s a disaster going on?
We went to UIC, dropped off our stuff, and then went to O’Hare Airport to meet our group. The international terminal is not that big, yet it took us a while to find them.
“We’re not going to Iowa,” we told them. “We’re staying here.”
–Kecia Lynn
Life of Discovery
May 27th, 2009
The view from Dunhuang
The first half of the Life of Discovery project has come to a close in Beijing. To our surprise the jet lag is working to our advantage. The delegation is already sharing images of the exchange.
Enjoy!
A Formal Introduction…
May 7th, 2009The question seemingly on everybody’s minds around here lately is “Why Iowa City?” Home to the world’s top writing programs, the first public university to admit women, and the third UNESCO City of Literature; in a state ranked second overall in 2008 state-by-state Happiness (!?), and recently the third state in the nation to declare banning gay marriage unconstitutional. A city nicknamed by some the “Athens of the Midwest;” in a state often confused for Ohio or Idaho, Iowa has largely been unable to claim much more for, or excuse, itself beyond “Is this heaven? No…”
But it was a series of recent space-negotiations that got me most thinking I’d better have an answer to that question at some point. I’ve lived in Iowa City long enough to have one in my holster, but it took the misgivings of a Swedish singer-songwriter and a Scottish cultural liaison before I had the proper caliber for the fight. Fresh off recent big-city stops on his American tour, dressed in the highlights and hoopla he’d created at the South by Southwest music festival, the Tallest Man on Earth (consequently revealed to be the smallest musician on earth) took one early look at the basement-setting of the Public Space One concert he’d later be mesmerizing, and according to that look on his face during sound check, thought to himself, “Why, of all places, here?” And Ali Bowden, the ever-graceful Creative Queen of Edinburgh’s UNESCO City of Literature designation, danced around errant Englert lighting and video projection malfunctions during our Iowa City C.O.L. ceremony in order to, amongst other pursuits, show a wanting crowd “Why Iowa City?” by way of “Why Edinburgh?” To be honest to Place, the question is quite natural. Iowa City’s reputation hardly precedes it, and though it may not be New York, it may not be Edinburgh, and it may not even be Austin, Texas, parts of the world continuously pulse through our streets more than they may ever know. But it is where two-hundred chest-to-shoulder, air-conditionless fans sat silenced and grateful by one of the greatest solo performances in memory in a downtown basement, and where an auditorium adopted a Scot as one of its own when they’ve so graciously accepted Iowa City as their literary sister-city-in-arms.
Currently at the IWP our roster for the Fall’s Residency of writers from around the world is beginning to take shape, and with those 40 honorary-citizens-to-be on their way we’re asking ourselves, ‘How will they each fare in our town?’ by way of ‘How does one exactly fit into a new space?’ How does the translation of the self take shape into a part of the new whole, and vice versa, how does the whole translate and take shape with new parts?
On the dawning of a UNESCO designation, in the company of the world’s greatest cities, we have a moment to appreciate that Iowa City is a sum of manifold parts. It’s on our sidewalks where you can walk on literary worlds and connect the dots to the city’s literary history, where mere days apart a stage hosted both Rap legend GZA and State Poet Laureate Marvin Bell. Where a music festival attracts the talents of artists we otherwise wouldn’t be able to salute, and at a ceremony where the brightest of Edinburgh reminds us, exactly, Why Iowa City. We accept, with hospitality, and we celebrate. We ARE where the world comes to write. We ARE a City of Literature. We couldn’t be more grateful for the time of those passing through, and we will celebrate the only way we know how, because it’s not that something is in the air, but rather that something is below our feet…
joe tiefenthaler
program assistant