Posted by Jennifer Taylor Johnson, GD Fiction Reader for 6.2
Whether your passion is writing and editing or you’re just looking for a class to fit your schedule in the fall, being a member of the Gandy Dancer team is not a decision you will regret. Joining the Gandy Dancer team is more than a grade on your transcript, it dedicating hard work and time into assembling the school’s literary journal and learning important life lessons along the way. Don’t believe me? Here are four lessons you will learn by being a reader for The Gandy Dancer. Continue reading →
Posted by Joohee Park, GD Poetry Reader for issue 6.1
College is often described as the time to take risks and step outside our comfort zones and usual circles, but it is also a time of burgeoning anxiety about the looming, unpredictable future.
Confronted with the question of what to do with our lives, we may wonder how to trust our own instincts. Often, this uncertainty can manifest itself in one’s writing as self-editing, self-censoring even before one has confronted the page. In this interview, I pose some questions or anxieties we may have as budding writers and participants in the literary world in the context of poetry. Continue reading →
Posted by Grace Rowan, GD Creative Non-Fiction Reader for 6.2
During the month of February, love is in the air. At SUNY Geneseo, the love of books and the art of reviewing is celebrated through the English Department’s third annual National Book Review Month (NaRMo). Readers can submit reviews of their favorite books to the NaRMo website: www.narmo.milne-library.org. The website provides five easy steps to writing a book review and how to submit the review once completed. NaRMo is accepting reviews from a variety of genres including Children’s Books, Drama, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.
To learn more about NaRMo and why book reviews are a great asset to not only the Geneseo literary community, but also the campus community, I interviewed the Coordinator and Student Chair of NaRMo here at SUNY Geneseo, Heather Molzon. Heather Molzon is a senior Creative Writing major with a Communication minor. Continue reading →
Filed under Blog, Interviews
Tagged as Children’s Book, Dr. Lytton Smith, Drama, fiction, Geneseo, Interview, NaRMo, National Book Review Month, Non-Fiction, Poetry, SUNY
Posted by Arianna Miller, GD Co-Poetry Section Head for 6.2
Shara McCallum was this semester’s visiting poet at SUNY Geneseo. I had not only the pleasure of sitting down for lunch with McCallum, both also of reading her diverse collection, Madwoman. Madwoman spans across what it means to be a woman, to have the privilege of being a black woman who appears white, and to accept being the daughter of a schizophrenic, all with the underlying presence of her Jamaican heritage. Continue reading →
Filed under Blog, Interviews, Poetry, Reviews
Tagged as Book Review, female identity, identity, Madwoman, McCallum, Poetry, poetry collection, race, Shara McCallum
Posted by Ariana Miller, GD Poetry Co-Section Head for 6.2
Last semester, fall 2018, I was student teaching in a 9th grade English classroom. Teaching responsibilities were immediately and entirely handed over to me. My cooperating teacher, or CT, said that if I taught the curriculum she usually did that time of year, I could do whatever I wanted with it. It just so happened that I would spend four out of the six weeks of my placement teaching George Orwell’s Animal Farm. My CT wanted me to focus on one major theme of the novel—leadership. Naturally, as a Creative Writing major, I decided I would have my students write a poem about a time when they acted as a leader. My project spanned the four weeks we were reading Animal Farm, and was interspersed with my teaching of literary techniques Orwell used in the novel.
Continue reading →
Posted by Emily Sterns, GD Public Relations Manager for 6.2
In the editing and production workshop in which Gandy Dancer is created, we’ve been working on making prototypes or mini literary journals, we’ve been calling Dandy Gancer. This group project got us thinking about the many decisions that go into creating a literary journal. Each group got a slush pile which contained fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. They were then tasked with creating a journal complete with a cover, masthead, table of contents, and a letter to the readers or mission statement. Continue reading →
Posted by Meghan Fellows, Managing Editor for issue 6.1
On the way to the 2017 FUSE (Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors) www.fuse-national.com conference this past weekend, myself, and the other passengers in my car were antsy. The conference was based in Pennsylvania, and we had a lot of road left. We were all excited; we would be representing Geneseo in a space where student writers and editors from all over the country were coming together for a weekend of workshops, and literary bonding. The theme for the conference was Resistance, and the keynote speaker was Martin Espada. From the backseat, the DJ of the hour was switching songs, and talking about the Espada. Continue reading →
Filed under Blog
Tagged as activism, fuse, literature, national, panels, Poetry, political, puertorico, studenteditors, workshops, Writing
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you are the sound of a bottle, neither prior to nor during its breaking—
only after, when it is structureless and unbound, but also the sharpest it’s ever been;
shards of glass in a puddle of sweet wine are enticing, wearing their veils of burgundy, hiding
and shaky hands become archeologists, excavating what remains.
when your teeth rot out, toss them one by one into the box where you keep the broken glass,
deep in the matter of your brain
and introduce them to one another, as if they weren’t already acquainted.
as if the bottle were a stranger to your bones.
Natalie Hayes is a first year English major and film studies minor at SUNY Geneseo. She has been writing poetry since she was about seven years old. She is sure that she has improved with time. While she is passionate about all types of artistic expression, from painting to filmmaking, poetry is her preferred medium.
Filed under Poetry
Tagged as Natalie Hayes, Poetry
A Priest
There’s a priest in town. Monsignor Something-Or-Another. He’s been wandering up and down the streets with a saunter like his knees hurt. Makes it out as if he has a place to be and carries a face like he knows we’re watching. Something’s wrong about him, Ma’am. Young lot said he’s been huffing old incense. Next-door Granny called it a stigmata. I spoke with the altar boy and he said there’s a Cathar psalm in the cellar. Whatever it is, it’s making him misspeak. Last sermon he said, “This life on Earth is just as it is in Heaven.”
Kneeling
The liquor is beginning to yell at me. This morning I mistook it for thunder. Remember when I knelt on the bathroom floor and you shaved my neck? Dad’s demon prowls deeper than hair. Now I know why they pray at AA. I know why they drink vanilla on Sunday.
Chiclets
When I do sleep, I spit out my teeth. It’s not always a bloody mess. Sometimes they clack out like Chiclets on the table. And I’m back in third grade, shoeless, with Mrs. Politski writing repent repent again and again on the board with a gluestick. When I wake there’s no sweat in the sheets. My teeth fall out but I don’t quiver.
Joseph Sigurdson is a prose poet from Buffalo, New York. He currently attends SUNY Oswego as a creative writing major. He has recently completed his debut collection of poetry, and has been published in Great Lake Review.
Posted by Frank Bruno, Fiction Reader for issue 6.1
In May of 2016 Ocean Vuong’s first full length collection of poetry, Night Sky With Exit Wounds was released by Copper Canyon Press. The book has since received swaths of rave reviews and a number of prestigious awards including the Whiting Award, the Forward Prize, and the Thom Gunn Award. Despite the relative media buzz created by the book, it only came to me a year after its initial release when my friend read me the poem “Thanksgiving 2006.” I started reading my own copy this past June and finished it last week. Continue reading →
Filed under Blog
Tagged as Book Review, Copper Canyon Press, Gandy Dancer, Geneseo, Interview, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong, Poetry, Reading, Small Press Publishing, SUNY
