March 2019 in the Midwest was a continuation of the previous two months: windy, gray, and bitterly cold. No promise of spring in sight. It had been two months since my graduation in December and I was immersed in the uncertainty that accompanies the great undergraduate unknown: the job search. As a recently engaged and …
Continue reading ““In the Meantime”: An Alumni Feature by Sam Mason ’19″
By Pablo Peschiera About the Prize The Academy of American Poets (AAP) Prize program begin in 1955 at 10 schools, and now sponsors nearly 200 annual prizes for poetry at colleges and universities nationwide. Poets honored through the program have included Mark Doty, Louise Gluck, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Sylvia Plath, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, …
Continue reading “Hope College Academy of American Poets Prize 2020”
Dr. Lauren Eriks Cline, a Hope ’08 graduate, recently got her PhD in English from the University of Michigan and is now an Assistant Professor of English at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. It’s March 20, 2020, and like millions of other people around the globe, I have spent the past week isolated in my house, watching …
By Ernest Cole COVID-19 has disrupted a good part of our daily routines or what was considered normal living: life as we knew it. From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, Americans are confronted with the challenges of a different mode of living. For us in the teaching profession, COVID-19 …
Continue reading “Coming Out of COVID-19: The Early Bird Catches the Worm”
Chair of the English Department, Dr. Ernest Cole, shares his reflections on living through the Ebola outbreak and how we can instill hope during the Coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Cole did not contract Ebola, but learned much from being close to the chaos. In May 2014, I was home (Sierra Leone) on sabbatical leave on what …
Continue reading “A Message of Solidarity and Hope to the Hope College Community”
“Think of something you used to do, that you loved to do, that did something for you while you were doing it. Brought you something. Everybody thinking of one? Now think of that thing you gave up that you loved to do. You gave up because you were, yeah, not good enough. Wasn’t ‘good enough.’ …
Teaching Rap as Poetry by Pablo Peschiera In my poetry classes, I often teach the basic structures of poetic rhythms through rap music. I use rap songs from artists like Public Enemy, Run DMC, Fu Schnickens, Queen Latifah, Eminem, LL Cool J, Lizzo, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar and many others. This no accident. Rap and …
Continue reading “The Rap and Poetry Gods Broke It Down to this Stuttering Boy”
As Marcelo Hernandez Castillo dug through the photo gallery on his phone, searching for a picture of his son, I realized that the thin man who sat before me didn’t quite match my idea of the poet I had envisioned behind Cenzontle. The beautiful and surreal lyrics Castillo weaved through his 2018 book had prepared …
by Ernest & Ernesta Cole As the airplane began its final descent into Banjul International Airport, I was overcome by a feeling of nervous excitement. I was excited at the prospect of coming back to my adopted home, the place where my wife and I sought refuge at the height of the civil war in …
Continue reading “Going Home: Its Complexities and Possibilities”
I went to hear the most recent American Nobel laureate in literature last fall. It wasn’t a reading. As has become his norm, Bob Dylan did not speak at all, even to introduce the members of his band (which is a shame, because they’re outstanding). All he did was sing, in that never-pretty voice that …
Continue reading ““The Love of Bob”: A Faculty Feature from Curtis Gruenler”
