Kendra Kopelke

Kendra Kopelke

associate professor
program director, M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts
School of Communications Design

B.A., Ohio University
M.A., The Johns Hopkins University

kkopelke@ubalt.edu

I don't remember a time when I didn't love poetry and the very sounds of words. But it wasn't until I was in a college poetry workshop that I realized it was an art form that I could actually pursue. I fell in love with poetry in that workshop, with the poem on the page, the beautiful way poems looked on the page with the white space around them, the way each word made a physical impression. I loved reading the work of my classmates, talking and thinking about each and every line. I loved listening to great poets like W.S. Merwin, Louise Gluck, John Logan and Robert Bly read their poems at readings. I loved the places that poems took me, the experiences I had when reading. I loved the particular solitude that was required when I sat down to write. I did not determine to "be a poet," consciously; I just never wanted to do anything else.

Teaching gives me the opportunity to introduce others to this intimate and challenging occupation. Students come to poetry with a fair amount of reticence and sometimes even resistance, and I try to help them learn ways to read poetry that can stimulate their imagination. And since poetry is one of the most human of the arts, in which one makes direct contact with personal experience, the classroom can become a very special, and sometimes sacred, place.

I am a poet and I am also an editor and publisher. Over the past 17 years, I have edited Passager, a national literary journal I founded, which features new older writers, and just recently I have begun to publish books by the best of those writers. The idea for Passager emerged while I was teaching a writing class at the Waxter Center for Senior Citizens in downtown Baltimore. I had never been in a room full of 70-, 80-, and 90-year-olds, and the passion was exhilarating. It changed my life.

In 2005, Passager Books published its first book of poems, A Cartography of Peace, by a new 86-year-old poet, Jean Connor, and in spring 2007, its second, Improvise in the Amen Corner, with poems and drawings by Larnell Custis Butler. Passager and Passager Books are dedicated to promoting creativity in old age and honoring the creativity in our elders. I am interested in changing negative thinking about aging and exploring ways that art can continue to enrich our lives into old age.

I am very interested in exploring the book as an object of art and discovering new ways to integrate text and image, as well as ways to create objects (books) that are conceptually imaginative, experimental and original.

I am the author of two collections of poems—Eager Street, published by Stonevale Press, and Carpe Diem, Ants, published by Seedbed of Irony Press—and one of three writers in When Divas Dance, published by Maisonneuve Press. I recently completed a series of poems, Hopper's Women, based on the paintings of Edward Hopper. Read "Western Motel" from this series.

I came to the University of Baltimore in 1985 and teach courses in creative writing, literature and publishing. I am convinced there is no school quite like UB (and before I came here, I had taught at several others in Maryland). The diversity of students creates life and surprise in the classroom, and each student's life experiences provide so many riches to draw from when making poems, short stories and memoirs. UB students are giving, inspiring and appreciative of their education; nothing is taken for granted. And in general, they seem to have so much energy and spirit—going to school and working full time, raising children. They are focused, organized, talented and very, very caring. I feel compelled to give them as much as I can in the short time we are together. I admire them enormously.

Works by Kendra Kopelke:

  • Eager Street (Stonevale Press)
  • Carpe Diem, Ants (Seedbed of Irony Press)
  • Bladderville (Willa Catheter Press)
  • Hopper's Women (forthcoming from Preston Street Press)
  • When Divas Dance, an anthology (Maisonneuve Press)

as editor of Passager Books:

  • A Cartography of Peace by Jean Connor
  • Improvise in the Amen Corner by Larnell Custis Butler
  • A Little Breast Music by Shirley Brewer
  • A Hinge of Joy by Jean Connor
  • Keeping Time: 150 Years of Journal Writing
  • and Passager journal, issues 1-48.