Students in search of poetry no longer have to trek to Russell House to hear a reading, leaf through lengthy chat books, or devour infrequent publications. House Lions, a taped weekly poetry recording, is expanding the University’s poetry scene while making it easy to access new works without leaving your dorm room.
House Lions was created in the fall of 2009 and is aired weekly on the Blargus. It is named after Sonia Sanchez’s book of poems, “Does Your House Have Lions?”
“‘Does Your House Have Lions?’ has a lot to do with negotiating families and configuring space,” said Davy Knittle ’11, founder of the House Lions podcast. “House Lions is a space to negotiate the poetic family of Wesleyan.”
Knittle, a student, poet, and double major in English and African American Studies, is deeply involved with poetry and creative writing on campus. Working as a Student Administrative Assistant to Anne Greene, the Director of Writing Programs, Davis had a hand in what student groups would use the student publication space located in the newly built Shapiro Center. Thanks to his involvement, the House Lions was able snag the new space and record their poetry podcasts in the building.
Chiara Di Lello ’10, who was already featured on House Lions and has been involved in poetry on campus, is enthusiastic about the use of the Shapiro Center.
“It’s great because it’s a new space dedicated to writing actives,” Di Lello said. “I feel like doing the recording there was a great inaugural semester use for the space.”
Every House Lions recording includes three poems written and read aloud by the featured poet. The student then answers a series of questions focused on their influences and their involvement in the University’s poetry scene. Knittle also writes up a short review of each poet’s work.
The podcast is one step in a series of Knittle’s endeavors to push poetry into the public sphere. He feels that there are people on campus writing amazing work who are not being heard due to a lack of available and diverse outlets.
Knittle hopes that the House Lions podcasts will make poetry more accessible, since students can to listen to the poetry rather than read it.
“House Lions will hopefully solidify a movement in the last couple years to make poetry more acceptable for a listening audience, and also to make it less scary,” said Knittle. “People are as scared to read poetry as they are to write it, and part of the idea of House Lions is that we’re more likely to listen to someone read their work than we are to sit down with a book of poetry and deal with that.”
There have been six House Lions recordings so far, featuring student poets such as Di Lello and Lizzie Greenwald ’12. This week Josh Smith ’11 and Mike Rosen ’11 will be recording and airing some of their work.
In addition to making poetry readily available to the University population, the podcast has benefits for the writers themselves.
“It was fun to record and field questions and find that I was understanding things more as I answered the questions,” Di Lello said. “I think this is a growth experience both for the featured poets and for the people listening to the recordings.”
Knittle hunts down students to read for the show, keeping his finger to the pulse of new and emerging poetry on campus. For example, Knittle found Greenwald after reading a poem she submitted to the Wesleyan Poetic Census.
“I latched onto the poem and I was like, this is awesome, I wonder what else this kid is doing,” Knittle said. “I looked into her work and talked to her about it and she seemed like the perfect person to share with the Wesleyan community.”
Greenwald, a prospective Biology and English double major, had not been involved with the University poetry scene before the podcast.
“I’ve been writing a lot and hiding my work in my room,” Greenwald said. “[That is], until Davy pushed me to do something crazy like actually share my work with other people.”
Knittle is not looking for the be-all-end-all of poetry. Instead, he tries to find work that will appeal to the student population—as long as one student can relate to the reading, he will air it. Even so, being a one-person editorial board makes him nervous.
“If you’re brave enough to do it, that says something about your work,” Knittle said. “You are your own screening process. I’m looking for stuff people are excited about, that they want to share with the Wesleyan community. People deserve to have their work out there.”