Thanks to Suzanne for this link:
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/to_the_whiting_award_winners_2009/
to Margaret Atwood’s speech at the Whiting Awards. My favorite bit was this, because yes, I went pre-med for my first degree, and yes, my parents – even though I am 36, had a decade-long career in business before I devoted my time to writing, and am currently teaching poetry at the university level – still tell me to go get my MD:
“Be vigilant – there are ambushes everywhere. On one side lurk the critics, getting ready to sneer and denounce, or worse, to praise for the wrong reasons; on the other side your parent figures, who always wanted you to be doctors, and who have furnished themselves with a list of writers such as Checkhov who were writers, yes, but doctors too: why can’t YOU do that? This is not helpful.”
I was also happy to see Jericho Brown on the list of recipients. Congrats, Jericho! But also interested to read at Steve Fellner’s that unfortunately, the Whiting Awards haven’t been that kind to women lately…Come on, Whiting Award mystery list of nominee-makers! Isn’t it about time women writers earned one half of the big, money-granting awards?
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
David V
Now, not all poets’ parents are like that.
Some want us to be engineers.
jeannine
My dad being an engineering professor, would have surely taken engineer as a very close second to doctor!
Radish King
I’ve been thinking about you as teacher lately, and quite frankly, I can’t think of a better person for the job. You know your poetry, you’re funny and nurturing, you’re the best reader of poetry I’ve ever met and you’ve got guts to stand up to anyone. All in all the real deal, I’d say. And I’d say it to anyone. I’d love to have you for a teacher, myself.
Rebecca, not-your-mother
(but I know what I’m talking about)
jeannine
Aw, thanks RL! Interestingly, I was thinking about working with Poets-in-the-Schools out here – MFA students are fine, but high school kids are so much more fun!
Valerie Loveland
I’ve been trying to decide if “Poet” or “Philosipher” would be at the bottom of most parent’s lists of occupations for their children.