Grad Student Wins Hayden Carruth Award
When Gallatin graduate student Christopher Martin (MA ‘07) submitted an entry for Copper Canyon Press’s 2006 Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets he thought his chances of winning the publication prize were “a tremendous shot in the dark.” The prestigious award, for which Copper Canyon Press received 1,200 submissions, was judged by well-known poet C. D. Wright, an award-winning and prolific author, MacArthur Fellow, and professor of English at Brown University. Yet, less than a year later, Martin discussed his win with Gallatin Today.
A Colorado Springs native who received his undergraduate degree as an English major from Carleton College in 2000, Martin is a teacher whose Gallatin concentration focuses on poetry, performance, and education. He has taken courses at the Steinhardt School of Education and the Tisch School of the Arts, and he noted that his latest poetry manuscript is centered on ideas he developed in classes such as Educational Psychology and Philosophical Analysis of Dance. He remarked, “My studies have led me down some really interesting and unexpected paths. The Performance Studies curriculum at Tisch has been the best surprise so far. Phenomenology should be a requirement for poets….thinking about ontology and perception is far more useful to a mature writer than getting suggestions for alternative line-breaks. Gallatin offers what an M.F.A. program never could.”
While Martin continues pursuing his graduate degree, Copper Canyon Press is in the process of publishing his book. He won the Hayden Carruth Award for his manuscript, American Music, which will be edited and then published in the fall of 2007. In addition to this distinction, the prize also includes a one-month creative residency at Centrum in Port Townsend, WA, which Martin can take at any time.
Martin is modest about his achievement, and earnestly focused on his current work at Gallatin. He stated, “choosing [to study at] Gallatin was about choosing to learn about more than poetry. It was also about approaching things with a kind of focused, inexpert mind. It was time to stretch, to test, not to perfect.” He recounted how he recently enjoyed an independent study project with Gallatin Professor Stacy Pies: “Though we have fairly disparate ideas about poetry, working them back and forth taught me a lot about where I’m coming from aesthetically. Stacy picked out things from my manuscript that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise and was a great source of encouragement.” He also lauded Tisch Professor Andre Lepecki’s courses in performance and dance, stating that “his instruction and the quality of thought brought to the classes by other students were unparalleled in my academic experience. Every day was like an intellectual marathon, but I always walked away feeling recharged, ready to write poetry.”
“Trajectory of a Thief,” one of the poems to be included in Martin’s American Music, appears below.
Trajectory of a Thief
It’s simple, a life
Of eccentric guessing
You move
To California, one drunk
Night you climb
Every fence in the neighborhood
And no one shoots you
And fog washes
The church steeple
Bare, months
Pass, you sell your car
To a surfer, move
Again, America roils, a man
Walks into a bar and then drives
Into a tree, you move
Again, one love
Recedes and another beckons
Brightly, your roommate
Gets rich and it befits
Her, the sun
Struggles over your eastward
Facing sill and it never
Occurs to you
To wonder how
It’s happening, it’s simple
Yves Klein invents
A color and it kills him
You steal six hundred thousand
Hours from god and fear
Capture constantly, one wriggling
Dactyl amidst the day’s lapidary
Scansion, you carry on
Unreasonably and bloodless
The moon is a rock that salutes
You for it, you forgo
Certain dignities, others
Are thrust upon you, animals
Curve to your touch, a Brooklyn boy
With an unpronounceable name
Writes Fire is tasty
You imbecile, the leaves
In the trees in
The park ignite and you climb
The fire escape to the roof
To chart the buildings’ unwavering
Ballet of windows, a bullet is
Cocked nearby, the cops drink
Beer from Styrofoam
Cups on the street below
Ted takes you to Chinatown for turtle
Soup, each piece
Of its floating meat
Wholly disparate, the cherry
Blossoms arrive and then
Dissipate triumphantly
Like the sting
Of winter as cephalopods
Adapt an anonymous
Russian woman saves you
From falling on
The subway, the rooftop
Reads GODOT, the waitress
At the diner calls
You Professor, it’s simple
The wind hits
Your lips and you’re
Pleased, a deer hits
Your father’s car and you’re
Inconsolable, a family
Of skunks makes purchase
Beneath the floorboards
And the impending decision puzzles
You—the stink or
The killing it
Takes to rid yourself
Of it, of them, who else?