Sun Dog Poetry Reading Comes to Vermont Bookshop

Last Thursday, David Huddle – who is currently a Fellow of the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a distinguished poet and novelist with eight published poetry collections and 11 works of fiction to his name – drew quite a different portrait of form in poetry through his lecture “Formal choice as the Path to Fresh Possibility” at a packed audience at the Vermont Book Shop.

The lecture – the second in a series titled “Poets and their Craft” – was organized by the Sun Dog Poetry Center. For each lecture in the series, each poet is in charge of choosing their own topic.

Based in Jeffersonville village in north-central Vermont, the Sundog Poetry Center works to promote poetry and create audiences for the poets based in Vermont. The center, whose name originates from one of Tamra’s poems titled “Parhelion,” is focused on ways to share poetry throughout the Vermont community.

Tamra Higgins, who is co-president of the center along with Mary Jane Dickerson, explains that this lecture series grew out of a desire to have a dialogue with poets about the many aspects of poetry that is typically excluded from the opportunity to discuss in a public forum.

For Professor Huddle – who has been teaching at the University of Vermont for over 40 years– making a formal choice does not necessarily mean imposing a standard form on your stream of thoughts. He explains how he has been making formal choices in the context of free verse poetry throughout his writing career.

“They include decisions like where one breaks a line or adds a three line stanza,” he explained. “They are little things that you do not pay attention to.”

As Huddle sees it, formal choices are not only for the writer. As an example, he had an audience member read out a poem of his chronicling the days of his father’s last illness. The second to last line of the poem ended with an enjambment that forced the reader’s eyes to continue without pause. This format created a sense of breathlessness, and forced the reader to make conscious decisions about the poem should be read.

Huddle also explained that formal choices do not have to be conventional either. He referenced with delight a number of poems of his in which he tried to make all the lines come out exactly the same length in typewriter space. He had varying success.

Emphasizing how poetic form should have a purpose, Huddle describes how form should move the reader, rather than merely showing off the writer’s skill. As an example he mentioned shape poems, in which the physical arrangement of the words in the poem play an important role in conveying the intended meaning of the poem. In Huddle’s view, shape tends to become much more the point than the content itself.

To further depict how he views form, Huddle compares poetic form to the way a jazz musician interacts with accompanying musicians; where the accompaniment is a steady rhythm with some chord changes, the jazz musician who is improvising weaves the melodic story into the background music.

As Huddle describes, the process is “something steady and solid under a line that can meander all over the place.”

Shedding light on his creative process, Huddle explains how form and content overlap in his mind simultaneously. He describes how while writing the poem he can “almost step back and let the two [form and line] talk.”

Huddle then explains how he draws inspiration from that that specific moment of overlap.

“When I am writing and suddenly I put down a word or two, a line or a sentence that I had no idea I would write.”

Alongside expansive events like this lecture series, the Poetry Center also organizes periodic retreats to Fielder Farm at the base of Camel’s Hump in Huntington. Higgins and Dickerson are currently preparing for a ‘Poetry and Healing Retreat’ on April 17-19  for people interested in exploring poetry as a means of dealing with loss or difficult events.

Although Dickerson recognizes that the SPC still has a lot to do for the encouragement of young poets in Vermont going forward, the Center at large has received a positive response from the Vermont community. The organization has grown significantly since its inception.

Higgins mentioned the tremendous encouragement they have received from local bookstores throughout Vermont, many of which have taken up the center’s cause and cooperated extensively for the organization of the long-running lecture series.

This current lecture series will run until October 8. For more details and full event listings, visit sundogpoetry.org.