The Writing Lives Story Project

 Winning the Wick Chapbook Prize has been, and continues to be, instrumental to my life as a poet.  Surge was taken at a time--midway through my PhD at Ohio University--when I was full of doubt about my poetry, and about the "life of a poet." I'll never forget the phone call from Maggie, her generosity--and her specificity--about my work. And it continued years later when I met Judith Volmer, who had selected my book. It affirmed that hard work is the work, and that I'd been doing it all along. Chapbook as beginning, beginning of a conversation.

That was the then of the story. The on-going is that being a part of the Wick Program has enriched me with numerous friendships that continue to branch and proliferate; there is community in the Wick family, and a sense of that ineffable spirit of the endeavor that keeps one writing in the dark hours. Looking at the anthology The Next of Us is About to be Born--the pictures and the poems--reminds me of that anew. 

As things turn, and turn out, I ended up a college professor. Now I'm the (impending) Director of Creative Writing at Colorado State University, where I work closely with MFA students on their theses. I've published two full-length collections, and two other chapbooks; the writing's been going pretty well (www.matthewcooperman.com). But what matters most about my association with the Wick Program--and what was made patently clear on my recent visit--is its educational vision. It's a vision I aspire to as an educator, and as a poetry editor of Colorado Review. Poetry matters to people--individuals with varied and strange needs. To be given an opportunity in the art is to give back the opportunity later. I'll always be grateful. 

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