The Tripod

Media Credit: Courtesy of Ciaran Berry [Click to enlarge]

Last Friday, Oct. 23, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Ciaran Berry, a new addition to Trinity's English department as of this semester. Berry, who grew up in Ireland and relocated to the United States as an adult, previously studied and taught creative writing at New York University before coming to Trinity, where he currently teaches Contemporary Irish and American Poetry, American Dystopia (a First-Year Seminar), and will teach Advanced Creative Writing in the spring. Berry is not only a teacher; he is a published poet, and his first collection of poems, The Sphere of Birds, debuted in 2008.

Berry will be reading a number of poems from The Sphere of Birds, as well as some newly-written work, at a poetry reading on Tuesday, Nov. 3, during Common Hour in the Rittenberg Lounge in Mather Hall. Said Berry of his upcoming reading, "I want to let people - students and faculty - know that I'm here [at Trinity], and maybe begin to get people thinking a little more about poetry. I see poets as people who have to be involved in the public life, not just sitting up in their towers writing their poems. I'm interested in how poetry connects to communities and beginning that dialogue about how that kind of fits in to other parts of Trinity."

This may be a difficult task, considering the widespread fear that has come to be associated with poetry. For some, it doesn't feel accessible; for others, it just seems more difficult and involved than reading prose. Berry, however, believes that this fear or distaste for poetry comes from the kind of poetry we're forced to read in high school, and says that being able to relate to the subject matter is very important for teenagers. "[Poetry] is such a wide-ranging art form - particularly in contemporary poetry there's so much going on - and if you really look you will find something that you're interested in," Berry said. "As a 16-year-old you may not connect with Frost or Dickinson but you might connect with someone like Billy Collins or Sharon Olds. If [students] were shown poets they could relate to more, it might get them involved more deeply in reading poets they maybe don't relate to later on."

This way of looking at poetry seems to have been Berry's preferred method for some time. As a teenager, Berry often wrote poetry, citing "teen angst, and all those things that we think are true when we're teenagers" as inspiration. As a student at the University of Ulster in Ireland, he abandoned poetry for prose, writing fiction instead. It was the experience of trying to write a novel, Berry said, that made him see where his ambitions really lay: "I spent several hours a day trying to write, and every time I went for a walk to clear my head a poem would come into my head. So that seems in some ways an indication of where my mind really wanted to be."

This sentiment is evident in his poetry, with its thoughtful and evocative imagery. Berry has received much praise for The Sphere of Birds from writers such as Eamon Grennan and Cathy Song, who cite his "astonishing feel for language, physical fact, and ramifying thought" and the manner in which his poetry moves "from the emotional to the historical, expositional to spiritual, blindness to vision."

Paul Lauter, Allan K. and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English and Department Chair, has also commended his colleague, saying "Those of us who have read Ciaran's poetry have been stunned by its remarkable combination of intensity, music, and narrative." Students who attend Berry's reading next Tuesday will find themselves in agreement with Lauter's assessment. Seldom do we encounter such a talent for wordcraft in our midst; it would be a shame to miss an opportunity to experience it in person.

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