Alexandra Teague, a faculty member of the University of Idaho English department who has won numerous awards for her writing, read from two of her collections Wednesday night.
Teague read several poems from her book “Mortal Geography,” for which she won the 2010 California Book Award. Teague said the book contains poems that are partially autobiographical and some that are historical.
She said the book’s theme is vaguely place and displacement. One of the poems she read from this collection was “Referral,” a poem about going to the dermatologist on Halloween and having to discuss the possibility of cancer with nurses in Halloween costumes. The poem is a little “absurdist,” Teague said.
She also read from her in-progress manuscript, which she’s been working on for a year with the help of 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. This manuscript centers around the Winchester family legend and their mansion in San Jose, Calif.
The mysterious house, built by the heir to the Winchester family fortune, contains secret passageways and staircases that lead to the ceiling. Supposedly, Sarah Winchester built the house this way to protect herself from the ghosts of people who had been killed by Winchester rifles. From this collection Teague read “The Blueprint” and a crown of sonnets called “Plinky Topperwein, Champion Markswoman, Remembers,” among others.
Doug Heckman, UI Master’s of Fine Arts creative writing program director, said it is important for people to take the opportunity to go to readings like this to understand what is valued in art.
“She’s been recognized as a significant poet in America. I think that for itself speaks that it would be behoove people to hear what she has to say,” Heckman said.
Heckman said Teague’s writing is easily accessible and that people can understand her poems the first time they read or hear them.
Teague said people often enjoy her poems because they tell stories that are easy to follow. She said she believes it is natural for people to hear poetry spoken out loud in readings like this because poetry began as a spoken art.
“You can get something special out of hearing a poet read their work, in the voice they intended (it to be in),” Teague said.
Teague said people who hear or read her work get a feeling of her preoccupations in life. Themes of language itself as a subject, visual art, music and women’s history occur often in her poetry, she said. She also said one of her main interests in creating a work is the musicality of language, which comes through when the poems are read aloud.
Heckman said he loves Teague’s attention to setting in her poems. Other stories or poems could be placed anywhere, but some of Teague’s poems incorporate places that are significant to the poetry itself, Heckman said.
Although Teague has many praises and awards, she remains humble about her poetry, as she said, “A variety of poetry exists in the world … I’m just one voice.”