Mela Kirkpatrick
FROM:
Chapel Hill, NC
HEROES:
Flannery O’Connor, G.K. Chesterton
PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENT:
Becoming a certified mixologist.
SOMETHING YOU MIGHT TEACH AT THE SUMMIT:
I'm very concerned with the state of poetry education in this country. Most children leave school hating rather than loving poetry. This is a graver matter than most would care to believe, and I would demonstrate how poetry is critical to a child's education and future development.
SOMETHING YOU HOPE TO LEARN AT THE SUMMIT:
Mostly, I'm looking forward to meeting fascinating people and hearing whatever they have to teach me.
SOMETHING YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH IN YOUR WORK:
I am struggling to make the meter of my poems sound more natural. I am also struggling to get through to my students that poems are made of words rather than ideas.
SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY:
The Gospel of St. John, mint juleps + porch + summer evening + old friends
SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU ANGRY:
Sycophants and misuse of the word “tolerance”
TELL US ABOUT YOUR FAMILY:
I owe them everything. They have an overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous.
AN IDEA TO MAKE THE 30SUMMIT EVEN BETTER:
I'll let you know after I've attended it!
BIOGRAPHY:
Mela is currently working towards her Masters of Fine Arts in poetry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, where she teaches an undergraduate course on Fiction and Poetry. This summer she designed and taught a course on ekphrasis in poetry and painting. Mela was with the National Endowment for the Arts—as a Fellow in the Literature Office and as the Executive Assistant to Chairman Dana Gioia. A Morehead Scholar, she graduated with highest honors from the University of North Carolina with a degree in Art History and Creative Writing. She also received the Robert B. House Memorial Prize in Poetry. Mela has lived and worked in England, Italy, and Tanzania.
