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Nadine Meyer and Steve Gehrke each won a highly coveted
national poetry award. They are doctoral students in MU's
top-ranked Creative Writing Program. Jill Housh photo
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Twice
Is Nice
By Nancy Moen
About 1,400 poets enter the National Poetry Series competition every year, knowing that only five of them will win the coveted award. This year, two of those five winners are Mizzou students.
Steve Gehrke learned recently by phone that
he had won one of the prestigious awards for 2005. Then minutes
later, Gehrke’s wife, Nadine Meyer, received a similar phone
call. In the world of poets, the National Poetry Series is arguably
the premier book contest in the nation. Distinguished national
poets select the five annual winners.
“I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time there have ever been two from the same program in the same year,” says Professor Rod Santos, director of the Center for the Literary Arts and a mentor to the winning MU poets. Santos himself won the prize in 1982 for his first book, Accidental Weather.
The day before news of the double win arrived, Gehrke received notification that his same manuscript had won another significant national prize. He decided to “unaccept” that award to receive the National Poetry Series prize. Earlier in the year, husband and wife both received nominations for a prestigious Pushcart Prize, which Meyer won.
HarperCollins will publish Meyer’s book, The Anatomy Theater, and the University of Illinois Press will publish Gehrke's, Michelangelo’s Seizure. Both poets, who are doctoral students in the Creative Writing Program, received a $1,000 cash prize.
Gehrke and Meyer shaped their award-winning poetry from art images the couple saw during a visit to the museums of Paris. Gehrke was fascinated by painters and the dramatic events that changed their work. His title poem paints images of Michelangelo suffering an epileptic seizure. Meyer found inspiration in Renaissance wood-block prints of anatomy lessons. With descriptive imagery and metaphor, her poems raise questions about how the female body is studied and objectified in art.
Both poets worked diligently to understand their subject matter. Meyer researched and wrote academic papers on anatomy. Gehrke took an art history class to examine the theoretical issues of self-portraiture.
Part of this couple’s poetry-writing routine is a process that could end a less-secure marriage: Gehrke and Meyer review each other’s writing as first readers. Then their poetry must undergo critiques from fellow doctoral students and one of their two faculty-mentors in the Creative Writing Program, Santos and Lynne McMahon.
Meyer calls MU’s Creative
Writing Program a remarkable experience with a warm atmosphere
and supportive mentors. Gehrke says there are many excellent student
writers in the program. “I can see everyone in the poetry
program publishing a book at some point.”
Gehrke and Meyer share their talents with undergraduate students by teaching Introduction to Poetry and occasionally Intermediate Poetry.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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