Despite the rain n Tuesday, Feb. 26, 25 students gathered in the atrium of Greenwood Library to listen to poetry written by Longwood University professor Dr. Craig Challender. Challender has been teaching at Longwood for the past 30 years as a Creative Writing, American Literature and Mythology professor.
“When he’s not teaching or directing a lone gothic series, Dr. Challender writes,” said Amanda Hartman, special collections and digital initiative librarian at Greenwood Library. “His poems have been recently published in well known reviews and his fourth manuscript, ‘So Far: New and Selected Poems’, has been chosen as a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry; [which is sponsored by New Letters and BkMk Press]. His third book, ‘As Details Become Available’, has been nominated in the poetry section for the State Library of Virginia Literary awards.”
Challender’s poems have also appeared in the South Dakota Review, Connecticut Review, Tar River Poetry, The Midwest Quarterly, The Paterson Library Literary Review and Chelsea.
After the introduction, Challender got up to the podium and began to introduce his work to the crowd. He began writing poems when he was a graduate student, which in his words was “practically ancient for a writer of poetry.”
“I came here from the mid-west, and though I’ve lived in Virginia for years, a lot of the material [of the poems] does stem from growing up outside Wichita, Kan. and then later teaching in South Dakota,” said Challender. He went on to explain that this [the explanation] was his way of introducing his poems.
Challender then went on to read several of his poems, some somber and serious, with a few “rationed” funny ones thrown into the mix. The audience was asked to hold their applause until the end of the reading, for the sake of time. After the reading, students were allowed to help themselves to the refreshment table, where a smorgasbord of different types of delights was laid out for the enjoyment of others.
Sneakily placed by the food was a table where the option of buying an autographed copy of Challender’s book was presented to the members of the viewing audience. There was also a raffle where four students had the opportunity to win either one of three Barnes and Nobles gift cards or a lovely flower arrangement.
In regard to the question of why he started writing, Challender resoonded, “It may have been a way that I was not overcome with heavy feelings of that, of dealing with my sister. Those were the first serious poems I ever wrote and I took a creative writing class as a graduate student. I think maybe I decided that would be a way to make myself finish that group [of poems]. So that’s how I got started.” To all you poets out there who haven’t figured out how to get started, Challender has these words of advice for you: “Just start writing. That seems silly, but first read a lot of poetry, model people that you like and learn to not apologize for what your experience is. Be prepared to write stuff that isn’t just ‘pretty’. I mean, write about harder stuff. Write about true things.”
