...Czury’s Story “Becoming a poet and wanting to be a poet are antithetical quantums. Being language obsessed...thought=words, communication=words, dreams=words,” says Wilkes M.F.A. alum Craig Czury, an internationally recognized poet. Czury talks about how he became fascinated with his craft saying, “it was the torment of language, rather than a love, that led me to my first shrieks.” Prior to attending Wilkes, Czury had traveled internationally for a good 6-7 years with books translated into Spanish, Russian, Italian, Lithuanian, and Albanian. Czury was also a poet-in-the-schools for 25 years through various state and regional arts councils before he found himself with no work. Penn State offered him a full scholarship along with an apartment and teaching assignments until they realized he did not have a B.A. Likewise, the University of New Orleans initially arranged for an M.F.A. program in Spain, but they backed out for the same reason. Fortunately, friends affiliated with the Wilkes M.F.A. knew of the struggles he was facing and recommended he apply to the program. Norman Mailer, one of the founding fathers of the program, wanted Wilkes to be unique by letting writers without bachelor’s degrees into the program when they can demonstrate a storied publishing record, as Craig did. Moreover, Wilkes’s Creative Writing Program is one of the few in the country that does not require a GRE. Czury says that his acceptance was empowering, since he had little to no success in all other academic programs since eighth grade. He not only enjoyed the curriculum at Wilkes, but the low-residency format allowed him to continue traveling to places like Rome. When asked about his cohort he reminisces saying, “We had great camaraderie, hilarity, and brilliance together.” In the program, he studied creative non-fiction with Chris Busa as well as with Juanita Rockwell, a Buddhist playwright. He graduated with a cross-genre thesis defended as creative non-poetry. Since graduating he has continued to work with John Koloski and Jan Quackenbush while conducting interviews in the “fracking” region. As a writer, Czury says that his biggest success thus far was being invited as a featured poet to international poetry festivals in Colombia, Argentina, Lithuania, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Ireland. Moreover, he is honored to have been named Poet Laureate of the International Albanian Festival in Macedonia. When asked about future project Cruzy explained, “I’ve just returned from Chile, where I helped launch an anthology of poets from Tarapacá (Chile’s northern desert region) and poets from Pennsylvania, for which I had chosen. More importantly, I wrote a future book while there, poetic journal prose with photographs.” Czury is also known for creating poetry performance spaces not only in schools and community centers but also in shelters, prisons and mental hospitals. When asked why he explained, “my mother and I have a running argument (even though she’s been dead for decades) about the amount of times I ran away from home when I was a kid vs. the amount of times she threw me out. I spent 15 years hitchhiking North America. My sister spent a year in the state hospital in Danville after a suicide attempt. Spending a few nights in jail comes with the road, homeless shelters, soup kitchens… I just naturally gravitated toward the places and the people I was familiar with the hope I could get the right words written from them I never got when I was there.” Finally, when asked about his writing process, Czury proceeded to send the image of a blank page, but recommended that all writers change their name and run away from home. wilkes.edu/academics/graduate-programs/masters-programs/creative-writing-ma-mfa/revise-this-october-2014.aspx
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 21:46:30 +0000
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