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Connecticut Poet Laureate Visits as Westminster Poet
Rennie McQuilkin, the Connecticut Poet Laureate, visited Westminster April 16-17 as the Westminster Poet for 2018. He gave a reading in Werner Centennial Center and visited English classes during his stay. In preparation for his visit, students had read “North of Eden: New & Collected Poems,” his 15th poetry collection.
“We have been extremely lucky, as a school, to have spent the last eight months reading and enjoying Rennie McQuilkin’s work,” said Lawrence Court, head of the English Department, in introducing the poet for his reading to the Westminster community. “His poetry has inspired discussions about all sorts of important issues, such as the importance and significance of history and the sacred roles that art and the artist play in our world. His work has allowed us to take a fresh look at the people, the animals, the landscapes and the relationships that we can often take for granted. His poetry has enriched and elevated us.”
During the reading, McQuilkin explained the inspiration for the numerous poems he read. “We send our poems out into the world and hope they keep,” he said.
McQuilken’s work has been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse and other journals. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the state of Connecticut. He co-founded and for years directed the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Conn., subsequently founding Antrim House Books, which publishes Connecticut, national and international poetry. In 2003, he received the Connecticut Center for the Book’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2010, the center awarded him its poetry award under the aegis of the Library of Congress.
In English classes, students asked McQuilkin questions about the poems they had read and about his writing process. “When I create poems, I am not very conceptual,” he said. “I kind of give into it. I don’t necessarily know where I am going with a poem.” He added that he doesn’t explain everything in a poem. “Poetry isn’t going to give it all to you; it is going to ask you to be a participant.”
In response to a question about what advice he would provide to someone looking to be an author, he told the students: “Just do it. Don’t be afraid to send a poem out to a school publication or join a writers’ workshop. Let the experience grow you.”
“Rennie McQuilkin was in so many ways the perfect Westminster Poet,” said English teacher Michael Cervas, who directs the Westminster Poet Series. “His poems are accessible enough for high school students, whether they are narratives or lyrics, but they are also wonderfully crafted and multifaceted. He has a very musical ear, and his poems incorporate all of the musical devices of sound available to a contemporary poet. As a teacher, he was extraordinarily generous and forthright, too, not to mention charming and funny.”
McQuilkin and his wife, the artist Sarah McQuilkin, live in Simsbury, where he is the local poet laureate.
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