Faculty Enrichment

By Portfolio Center writing instructor Tania Rochelle

Last week, I attended the Warren Wilson MFA alumni conference, which was held at beautiful Mount Holyoke College this year. The annual gathering is small, only about 50 people, with classes, lectures, and readings given by fellow grads (known as Wallies), peer to peer.

It's a pretty impressive group, these alums: poets and fiction writers ranging in age from 25 to 80, who are also--among other things--professors, journalists, editors, doctors, lawyers, social workers, coaches, yoga instructors, actors, dog trainers, and beekeepers.

But as diverse as the writers' lives and lifestyles, we have in common our life-changing experience at Warren Wilson, and the memory of that little valley in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Ask any of us about it: There will be tears. In other words, while there might be an occasional, passionate upscuttle (made-up 'conference word of the day,' meaning "kerfuffle") among us, a lasting sense of kinship does endure. It's portfoliocenteresque in that way.

For seven heavenly days I got to revel in and with my ilk, talking poetry, taking such classes as 'The Glosa: Engagement or Injury?' and 'Interjection and the Lyric Mode.' That's right--Heaven, the equivalent of 'Linocut Image-Making on the Iron Handpress' at one of your Type conferences.

I stayed in a spartan dorm room, where I slept in a twin bed on sheets as old and gauzy as Bea Arthur. Every morning, I had to plod down the hall to the communal showers before walking half a mile in the rain to the cafeteria for eggs with onions (I hate onions!). Yet I was happy.

You know the feeling? It's like dragging out of bed for Hank's 5:30 a.m. classes, and watching your classmates perform a skit about Louis Kahn with sock puppets. Ridiculous and exhilarating.

And what I brought back to school with me was a renewed sense of myself as a writer, fresh ideas for in-class exercises, and a reaffirmation of the value of community and support--the same kind of support I witness every day among the Portfolio Center students and alumni.