The Words, April 2016
From Brooks to Opal: Interning at the Poetry Center of Chicago
Zeena Fuleihan ‘18
This past summer, I interned at the Poetry Center of Chicago, a non-profit organization that has put on poetry readings in Chicago since 1974. They also recently started a program called Hands on Stanzas that sends poets to underprivileged Chicago Public Schools to teach poetry. Located in the Chicago Cultural Center, a historic building with two huge stained glass domes and intricate stonework, the Poetry Center is just one of many incredible arts organizations housed in Chicago.
As a Digital Archive Intern, my main job at the Poetry Center was to build an online archive of their past poetry readings. Once I built the website framework, I got to spend all my time creating profile pages for each poet that has read at the Poetry Center in the past 41 years. Essentially, I read copious amounts of poetry, listened to old audio files of poetry readings, and found cool media related to each poet to pile into profiles. Some of the more notable poets who gave readings at the Poetry Center include Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Li-Young Lee, Louise Gluck, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Kimiko Hahn; the list goes on, exemplifying the importance of the Poetry Center of Chicago to the literary scene in the United States.
One unique opportunity I had was talking to a group of young writers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s pre-college creative writing summer course. My coworkers and I headed over one afternoon and met the class of about 15 high schoolers. We presented on our roles at the Poetry Center and offered some advice about the writerly life. Though I was fairly nervous about giving advice to students who were so close to my own age, I ended up having a great time. I discussed what it’s like to be a young writer and encouraged them not to let their age stop them from taking on ambitious projects.
As an organization based on the coordinated efforts of just a few poets, The Poetry Center of Chicago boasts some incredible individual talents. One of my coworkers, Danielle, curates the current Six Points Reading Series in which she finds two stellar poets to give a reading each month. Over the summer, I got to listen to and meet poets Joel Craig, Marty McConnell, Maggie Smith, Anthony Opal, Fred Sasaki, and Dolly Lemke. Though the reading series used to take place in one of the Chicago Cultural Center’s event rooms, Danielle decided to take the show on the road with a new location for each month. The venues range from churches to bars, ensuring a unique atmosphere at each event.
My other coworker, Paige, was in the process of completing her MFA in Creative Writing; her fellowship funded her work at the Poetry Center. She had her own personal project called “Poems On Demand.” Every day, she took her typewriter up to the lobby in the Chicago Cultural Center and set out a sign that said “Sit down, I’ll write you a poem.” When someone sat down, they would chat for a while, after which she typed out a poem on carbon paper, handed it to them and kept the carbon copy for herself. If no one sat down, she wrote poems for herself. By the end of the summer, she had over 70 poems to edit and compile into her manuscript for graduate school.
My favorite part of interning at the Poetry Center, though, was the community. As a group of four young, like-minded women working in the office each day, we bonded over our interests and daily lives, explored new music on a set of old speakers that I found in my closet, pooled our extra coffee-making utensils to set up an office coffee stand, made copies of our faces in the ancient copy machine, filmed videos for our boss’s backyard film festival, and cooked a big potluck dinner at the end of the summer to celebrate our hard-work and camaraderie. I am honored to say that I will be returning to the Poetry Center of Chicago this summer, and cannot wait to find out what is in store for me this time.