Nathaniel Perry was the first to kick off this year’s Author’s Series in which different poets and writers are going to come and read some of their works.
Perry didn't start writing poetry seriously until after college, but he always loved writing. He was actually a music major originally and then got a degree in English. Perry is the author of “Nine Acres” and he is also the editor of the “Hampden Sydney Poetry Review.” Perry also teaches as an Elliot Assistant Professor of English at Sydney in the creative writing department, specifically focusing on poetry and American Literature.
His reading included many excerpts from the “Nine Acres” collection, which contains a total of 52 poems. The poems are about his love for his three children, his wife and his students at Hampden Sydney. Even though it's a book of love poems, his titles are where his creativity appears.
Perry said, “My titles come from the book ‘Five Acres and Independence.’ It was a how-to book on how to farm, but it was also about sustainability in life." Some examples of his titles are, "Introduction," "The Farm to Choose," Vegetable Crops to Choose," and "Essential Factors of Productions."
“One of the problems was that I ended up writing a lot about manure even though it ended up being a book about love poems, and I ended up giving one of the ones about manure to my wife,” said Perry. “She wasn't too happy about that.”
Perry also read some new material. He read from “Bizarre,” which are poems about parenting his three children. His favorite poem was called “Sturgeon Moon.” This was another poem in a series that was based off of the different types of moons like "the travel moon" and "the harvest moon."
Perry tries to give himself challenges so he can have some structure when he's writing, to keep writing and to try new things. “I challenged myself to write poems about daily things or occurrences.” Perry said.
Some examples of this come from his poem called “Blank Song for a DVD.”
This poem was about his children watching the Halloween “Winnie the Pooh" DVD obsessively. Some other examples are a "Blank Song of Basketball" and a "Blank Song after a Birthday," according to Perry.
Another challenge he once gave himself was to write a really long poem. “This poem was about 30 pages but broken into different sections. Even though it's broken into different sections, the poem never really ends.”
The final poem he read was called “On Whiskey.” Following the reading, there was a question and answers session. Someone asked, "Do you prefer writing during the day or at night?" to which he replied, "I used to prefer to write during the morning, but since I had children I write more at night now."
Perry also said, “I compose on a computer because I can't read my own hand writing, and I can't write straight lines. So, the computer helps me line up my poetry.”
Perry said, “You can ‘write’ but you can really tell if they are just writing. You can't write without living. You have to put living into writing.”
