Visiting author transcends genres

Visiting author transcends genres

by Dwayne Steward
Speakeasy
Staff Writer
Sun, Sep. 10, 2006

Most writers devote their lives to conquering their given genre. Names such as John Grisham, Maya Angelou and Mel Brooks, immediately come to mind with genre labels. However Carla Harryman has devoted her life to conquering them all, creating genres of her own.

Harryman, a visiting creative writing professor for fall quarter, has published 12 books ranging and inter-changing from poetry and critical/literary essays to experimental novels to playwright and performance writing. She even collaborates with musicians to bring an audio/visual aspect to her writing.

“I don’t ever write for one genre,” Harryman said. “I have philosophical questions that are experiences that inspire me and I just start writing; genre is never my motivation.”

California born and bred, Harryman has devoted her life to the pursuit of interdisciplinary arts. Taking her literary bachelor’s degree and interdisciplinary arts master’s degree, she’s taking on the world of writing through collaboration and inter-genre writing.

Harryman spent last fall in Germany working one her performance piece, “Middle Play”, a political and philosophical motif, and spent her summer in France and Berlin doing the same.

“When I write something that will be performed I like to leave a lot of things open so the ensemble working on it can take it and make it their own,” she said. “I almost never put in stage directions, or other strict instructions.”

Her works include “Percentage” (1979), “Vice” (1987), “Under the Bridge” (1990), “There Never was a Rose Without a Thorn” (1995), “Gardener of Stars” (2001) and most recently “Baby” (2005). In early 2007 she’ll be releasing “Open Box”, a collection of poems structured in four line stanzas to represent the open-ended conversation she wants to have with her readers.

“I like my work to have an active audience,” she said. “’Open Box’ is basically a 48-page poem, it’s really the first one I’ve written.”

Harryman said she’s going in a new direction in the future by publishing her work on CDs. The improvised music scene and avant-garde jazz is something she said she has always been interested in.

“I’ve been talking with some musicians about creating something artistic that can be recorded,” she said. “It’s something I’ve never done, but I’ve always been interested in many different types of art and many of the musicians think just as I do, and can’t fit their works into a certain genre.”

Her writing process is as eclectic as ever. While, pursing this new line of artistic expression, she has been working on a more poem-like work entitled “Adorno’s Noise” that she hopes to finish next summer and another collection of essays for the distant future.

It has been nine years since Harryman found what she calls one of her greatest forms of inspiration at Wayne State University: teaching.

“I’ve been introduced to a whole new world that I didn’t know possible through the interaction with my students,” she said.

After spending only a week at the university she said she has already fallen in love with Athens.
“I love the pedestrian-friendly environment,” she said. “I’ve only used my car once.”

Harryman will be teaching a creative writing: non-fiction course and a graduate creative writing seminar this quarter before she returns to Detroit in the winter.