The Star News (September 2005)

The Poet's Antarctica

by Britt Aamodt

Antarctica—the coldest, highest, driest continent on earth—has been the haunt of polar explorers, one giant outdoor laboratory for scientists, and, for poet Jude Nutter, a source of inspiration.

Nutter, who spent mid-November to late December 2004 in Antarctica, selected her destination for its extreme climate and for its paradoxes: The fifth largest continent contains 70 percent of the world’s fresh water, yet ironically is considered a desert. Every year, it receives mere inches of precipitation, though in places the ice reaches depths of three miles.

Such paradoxes also abound in poetry workshops, where verse, rhyme and meter can transform mundane events—like a lake swim or family reunion—into reflections of great insight.

The recipient of numerous poetry awards and a teacher at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Nutter will be coming to Elk River, Saturday, September 23, to conduct a six-hour workshop: The Craft of Poetry—A Primer.

Sponsored by the Elk River Area Arts Alliance and Community Education, the class, beginning at 8 a.m., will introduce students to the mechanics of poetry—line, stanza, sound, figurative speech, voice and persona.

Readings and in-class discussions will reinforce the lessons. Students will also have time to write and workshop their own poetry.

Nutter’s teaching philosophy is to impose few restraints on her students. She gives them the tools of the craft then lets them run with subject and theme. For her, poetry is a personal journey with a destination only the poet can decide.

“I like to feel a bit uncomfortable,” she said of her own journey, which has included moves to several states. “There’s something about being out of my comfort zone which is important to me…. I’ve resisted settling in one place and I think that’s because of my writing.”

With some of the stormiest waters in the world thrashing its shores and 98 percent of its land mass covered by ice, Antarctica was a powerful lure for someone looking to step outside her comfort zone. Using the “desert” continent as a poetic framing device, Nutter intended to investigate the interplay of external and internal landscapes.

“There’s a relationship between the environment and our own dispositions, our own moods. I’ve always been interested in the question: Does mind make the landscape, or does landscape make the mind? I don’t know if there’s an answer to that.”

Nutter is currently at work on “Time, Place, and Imagination: Images and Poems from the Antarctica.” In 2006, the University of Notre Dame Press will publish her second poetry collection “Curator of Silence.”

Students interested in attending Nutter’s workshop should contact the ERAAA at (763) 441-4725 or at elkriverart@sherbtel.net.

Journalist

http://www.erstarnews.com 

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