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Poet Marc McKee, on driving through Missouri like a horse in a desert

Poet Marc McKee received his MFA from the University of Houston and his PhD from the University of Missouri, where he lives with his wife, Camellia Cosgray. He is the author of What Apocalypse? (2008). McKee will celebrate the release of his new full-length book of poetry, Fuse, 7 pm Saturday at the Columbia Art League with Melissa Range.

http://youtu.be/LUlOq_c1jH8
Above: Marc McKee performs his poem "Columbia 77"  at Get Lost Bookshop in downtown Columbia, October 10 2011

Before he moved to Missouri:

I'm originally from East Texas. Grew up in a small town named Big Sandy about 100 miles east of Dallas. When I was 17, my parents moved us to Indiana. I went to college there -- IU in Bloomington -- then did my Masters at the University of Houston. My girlfriend asked me where I'd want to go if we wanted to move away, and I said the thing I'd most like to do was to go back to school and get a Ph.D. The only place I applied was here, where two of my friends - Nicky Beer and Jason Koo - had gone. We began our tenure in Missouri in the fall of 2006, about two months after we got married.

On settling into Columbia, and the nature of a college town:

I had never been here. I think the most time I'd spent in Missouri - I'd been to St. Louis before on a family vacation, and we'd seen the arch. And we'd gone to the amusement park. And I think that was it, except crossing state lines. So I didn't have a lot of expectations. But I've found Columbia a fantastic place to be. It evokes strong memories of Bloomington - but while Bloomington is more developed and more obviously a blue hub in a red state, Columbia's not as fierce as that.

But when I was first in Bloomington, I didn't know the town, the gives and niches it had. I was part of a very specific university experience. I think a lot of kids probably have that same experience with MU. They come to a college town, they live in dorms or on the other side of town, so they'll radiate between their house, the classes they go to, and the library. And then maybe, maybe, on Friday and Saturday, they'll venture out to, like, Harpo's [a local sports bar]. Sometimes in the spring, I'll mention to my students the True/False Film Festival and ask if anyone's interested. Not many of them know what that is, or have any plans to go to it.

But having crossed over from student to teacher, things like that have given me a sense of how much these towns have to offer. There are places you can go see music, and you don't even know about them. And until you start venturing out, you don't even know how arts culture works, especially in very small ways. I think that's becoming increasingly vital. There are local bands like Believers that are amazing and play these shows you would never hear otherwise. I was introduced to this kind of culture in Bloomington, and it makes sense here - there are little hubs of grad students or people who are connected with the arts, where they mix with young people.

I don't think Columbia is quite Bloomington status yet. The journalism school is great and that still kind of eclipses some things. And I think True / False is really big, and I think it’s going to get bigger. I think the Creative Writing program is stellar here, too. I don't know how long it would take for Columbia to achieve a kind of indie-destination style like Bloomington, Austin or Madison. But I think the town is growing in that direction.

On the inspiration behind "Columbia 77"

Last year I was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Central Missouri, about 90 miles from Columbia in Warrensburg if you're going toward Kansas City. It's a smaller town; the university there is about 11,000 students. It was an opportunity to see a lot more Missouri countryside -- I mean, I actually had to get off the interstate to get there. And this poem was the first in a series I wrote about my long weekend commute to and from Warrensburg.

It was really the only space that I had to kind of let my mind go and actually focus on writing poems, and it became a traveling office through the Missouri countryside. I would see these fields, tall with corn when I started my commute, and by the time I was done making that commute the fields had been cut down to corn stubble. And that's an image I use later in the series. But the very first thing I'd see as I hit the interstate was a sign for Columbia - 77 miles away. I started with that idea, and any of the images I'd soak up, any of the dramas from the week of working with freshmen who were scared or nervous, trying to make a good impression, those would inevitably filter in. The first poem I wrote in that series ended up being a kind of "What do I tell them?" poem that's tracking the concerns of the day and trying to find a way to be at peace with the limitations of being a teacher. And those concerns are kind of lifting out as I'm driving. And as soon as I get to that space, and we're on the other side, it starts being about my eagerness to get home to be with my wife. The energy shifts, it starts getting looser with the moments I've transported from Warrensburg.

Davis Dunavin grew up in the bootheel of Missouri and worked for the Southeast Missourian and Off! Magazine before moving to New York City in 2006, where he worked as a freelance writer and a bookstore clerk. He's a Masters student in Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and served as a Convergence Journalism teaching assistant at KBIA before launching the Word Missouri project in August. He lives in Columbia with his wife Elizabeth, coincidentally also a bookstore clerk and organizer of the Cold Reading poetry series at Get Lost Bookshop in downtown Columbia. When he's not there, he can sometimes be found leading a double life as a street musician.