{"id":10738,"date":"2024-04-03T09:55:59","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T14:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=10738"},"modified":"2024-04-03T09:55:59","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T14:55:59","slug":"uw-superior-assistant-professor-awarded-the-john-rezmerski-manuscript-prize","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-superior-assistant-professor-awarded-the-john-rezmerski-manuscript-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Superior assistant professor awarded the John Rezmerski Manuscript Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Meg Muthupandiyan, University of Wisconsin\u2013Superior assistant professor of writing, was recently awarded the John Rezmerski Manuscript Prize by the League of Minnesota Poets for her poetry volume, \u201cOf the Earth and Other Desires.\u201d (Photo credit: B. Muthupandiyan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

University of Wisconsin-Superior Assistant Professor of Writing\u00a0Meg Muthupandiyan<\/a>\u00a0was recently awarded the John Rezmerski Manuscript Prize by the League of Minnesota Poets for her poetry volume, \u201cOf the Earth and Other Desires.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was delighted to hear \u2018Of the Earth\u2019 received the award,\u201d said Muthupandiyan. \u00a0\u201cI am currently completing another project, and the news was a pleasant surprise. It wasn\u2019t the book I anticipated having published this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muthupandiyan, who teaches nature writing, environmental advocacy in digital communities and creative non-fiction at UW-Superior, credits her grandmother for fostering her passion for poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a young child I found poetry a source of comfort and delight,\u201d said Muthupandiyan. \u201cMy grandmother was a great lover of poetry and read to me often. In those still moments on her lap, I discovered the wonderous ways language can forge meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

By age nine, Muthupandiyan was regularly writing as a contemplative practice. Her skills quickly advanced \u2013 to a point where it drew suspicion from a teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat year my teacher called my mother in for a conference, believing a poem I had submitted must have been copied from somewhere,\u201d said Muthupandiyan. \u201cIt was, she said, \u2018too mature a voice to be a third grader\u2019s.\u2019 My mother showed her the notebooks and blank books I had filled with illustrated poetry.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo her credit, after the meeting, the teacher sat down with me, offered both an apology for her mistrust and praise for what she called \u2018my gift.\u2019 It was an important moment \u2013 the first time I became aware that I had any particular acuity for anything, or for that matter, that what I had to say could possibly give someone else pause.\u201d<\/p>\n

That elementary school encounter has stayed with Muthupandiyan and is part of the knowledge she brings to the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of my own approach to teaching finds its roots in this experience,\u201d she said. \u201cI, too, am often surprised by delight at the rich interiority and creative approaches of my students, but instead of leaning into disbelief, I celebrate this wonder. When giving feedback, I invest time in naming their skills as writers and telling them how their work works on me as a reader.\u201d<\/p>\n

In developing her own style, Muthupandiyan, who is a 2024 George Greenia Pilgrimage Fellow at the Institute for Pilgrimage Studies at William and Mary, incorporated multiple methods to convey her message.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a free verse poet who uses a variety of forms, including the lyric, the ecstatic traditions, elegy, apostrophic poetry and dramatic monologue,\u201d said Muthupandiyan. \u201cThese terms mean very little to those outside the literary arts, however, so I prefer to describe my poetry style as a form of midwifery, delivering each small moment into the nurturing arms of the attention that birthed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within the pages of \u201cOf the Earth and Other Desires,\u201d that styling is on full display as the manuscript explores public places as the loci of intimate experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEach poem was written as a sort of field study of a place and a life form therein revealing their own wisdom, their own poetic sensibility,\u201d said Muthupandiyan. \u201cThe collection is called a poetic phenology because all but two of the poems in the collection arose through my observation of the seasonal emergence of natural phenomena during walks, pilgrimages and hikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe judge of the John Rezmerski Manuscript Competition, poet Shirley Balance Blackwell, calls \u2018Of the Earth\u2019 a poetry geocache because I provide GPS coordinates for each of the places which inspired the poems. I think that\u2019s apt,\u201d said Muthupandiyan.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf the Earth and Other Desires\u201d will be published this spring. Muthupandiyan will be reading from the book at the League of Minnesota Poets\u2019 Spring Conference in Duluth, Minnesota, April 19 to 20.<\/p>\n

\n

UW-Superior\u2019s\u00a0Department of Writing, Languages and Literature<\/a>\u00a0focuses on the study of languages, literature, and cultures from an international perspective. You\u2019ll be able to choose from a variety of learning paths, with majors and minors in\u00a0Writing<\/a>,\u00a0English<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0English Education<\/a>, as well as minors in\u00a0Spanish<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Global Studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Written by UW-Superior<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/www.uwsuper.edu\/about\/news\/uw-superior-assistant-professor-awarded-the-john-rezmerski-manuscript-prize\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Wisconsin-Superior Assistant Professor of Writing\u00a0Meg Muthupandiyan\u00a0was recently awarded the John Rezmerski Manuscript Prize by the League of Minnesota Poets for her poetry volume, \u201cOf the Earth and Other Desires.\u201d \u201cI was delighted to hear \u2018Of the Earth\u2019 received the award,\u201d said Muthupandiyan. \u00a0\u201cI am currently completing another project, and the news was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":10739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[110],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-10738","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-superior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/10738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=10738"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=10738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}