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November 30, 2008

Vigo author remembers roots

North Vigo grad Josh Bell’s first book published in 2005

By Deb Kelly

TERRE HAUTE — Josh Bell can’t remember the first poem he ever had published, but he remembers receiving many, many rejection slips before that first success, he says.

Bell, 37, a former Vigo County School Corporation student and Indiana State University graduate, now has multiple publication credits to his name, along with a book of his own poetry in print.

A lecturer at Columbia University in New York City, Bell sat down for an interview Sunday afternoon in Terre Haute, during a family visit over the holiday weekend.

Bell’s first book, “No Planets Strike,” was published in 2005 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Bell graduated from Terre Haute North Vigo High School in 1989. He attended Woodrow Wilson Middle School and Meadows Elementary.

He received his Masters of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a teaching-writing Fellow and a Paul Engle Postgraduate Fellow.

His poems have appeared in the Boston Review, Indiana Review, Triquarterly, Verse and Volt, among others, and they have been reprinted in several anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and Imaginary Poets: 22 Master Poets Create 22 Master Poems.

Bell recently finished his Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati, where he was University Distinguished Graduate Fellow. He also attended Southern Illinois University.

In his younger years, Bell said, writing was something he thought of as “play.”

“I always wrote from as early as I can remember,” Bell said. “Just playing around. My cousins and I would write plays and act them out, but I always felt like it was just, you know, playtime.”

Bell says he credits some of his teachers from Terre Haute with supporting his writing efforts.

When he was a student at Meadows Elementary, Bell said his teacher Mary Jo Wilson was very supportive.

“I often felt sort of strange about all this sort of writing, and she just made me feel very comfortable, she gave me free time to sort of do whatever I wanted in class,” he said.

“And then at [Terre Haute] North, Katherine Utley was just a great teacher for me, she was so good. She made us look closely at poems I wouldn’t otherwise have looked at at all. I still remember her teaching us Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant. That poem has been special to me ever since,” he said.

Bell also named Indiana State University professors Pete Carino and Matt Brennan, who he met when he was studying English Literature there, as significant teachers in his life.

In addition to his teachers, Bell credits the support of his parents and his grandmother, Evelyn Bell. His father, Frank Bell, is a retired ISU professor now living in Marshall, Ill. His mother, Marilyn Bell, taught at Woodrow Wilson for more than 25 years, and lives in Terre Haute.

“My parents were really supportive,” he said. “They read to me all the time. Grandma had Shakespeare memorized, and she’d teach me passages,” he said.

Bell, who was an only child, said when he was young, he wanted to make movies and write movie scripts. He spent a lot of time at The Meadows shopping center movie theater as a kid, Bell said.

“That was on my walk back and forth to school,” he said, “My grandmother would always take me to movies constantly, and for some reason I equate sort of the silence of the movie theater and that good feeling with sitting quietly and writing poems.

“A lot of my poems, I think, have to do with movies; not particularly good movies, you know, trash, frivolous stuff, but for some reason it’s very inspiring to me,” he said.

The self-avowed movie buff said he still relies on movies for inspiration. Living in New York City gives him access to every kind of movie.

“I spend way too much money [on movies],” he said with a laugh.

“Most writing is just a response to other writing,” Bell added, “Or TV or movies or music.”

His favorite poem is Frank O’Hara’s “To the Harbormaster,” he said.

As for his own poetry, Bell said, “Your favorite poem is always the one you just wrote.”

Before accepting the position at Columbia University last fall, Bell said, he taught at various other places, including the University of Alabama and the University of Wisconsin.

In the long-run, he said he intends to continue teaching, and said he might like to return to the general area of the Midwest. He is currently working on a second book of poetry.

Bell said although he doesn’t expect to get rich off of writing poetry, he will continue to teach because he feels it is necessary to teach.

“If I didn’t teach, I would know what I think about poetry,” he said. “Teaching and writing have a symbiotic relationship.”

“Even when you’re lecturing about other people’s poems, you’re teaching sort of secretly about your own,” he added. “Oftentimes I leave a good class feeling really charged up and I want to get home and write.”

The “supernatural” element of writing is something that Bell says makes him worry sometimes that he will run out of poems.

“A lot of poets tend to teach what they think about their own poetry, but I get superstitious about it,” he said.

“I think of a favorite couple of my poems, and I feel like I fell accidentally into this voice, and every time I sit down to write I think I could just fall as easily out of it,” he said.

“It does seem like magic sometimes,” he said.

Deb Kelly can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.kelly@tribstar.com.

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