Dr. Kevin Brown was the featured writer in the first event of the Lee University Writer’s Festival. Dr. Brown read from his first collection of poetry, Exit Lines, and other recent poems. Exit Lines was published over the summer by Plain View Press out of Austin, Tx.
Dr. Brown is an associate professor of English in Lee’s Department of English & Modern Foreign Languages.
"I was quite excited about its acceptance," said Dr. Brown. "I honestly never expected to publish a book of poems, even though I've been writing poetry for over a decade now. The entire process was fascinating."
Taking an author photo, finding a cover photo, writing a dedication and biography, and reading through several versions for consistency in capitalization were just a few steps in the publication process. In such a complex process, the last step, Dr. Brown said, was to "simply make sure that everything was spelled correctly."
"Diagramming Won't Help This Situation," a poem from Exit Lines, was read live on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, a radio show broadcasted on American Public Media. The Writer's Almanac educates and inspires listeners with brief facts and poetry related to each day's date. Dr. Brown's poem was the featured poem for Oct. 19 of this year. The day's show featuring Brown's poem can be heard at thewritersalmanac/publicradio.org.
Though an avid writer, it was only two years ago that Dr. Brown became more serious about his writing. Setting out to write creative essays, he created a schedule for the essays and wrote. After receiving positive feedback on his poetry later that year, he took the same approach to writing new poems.
His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, The Pacific Review, and other scholarly journals.
Last year, Dr. Brown wrote poems based on old words from the Oxford English Dictionary. Inspired by an interview he heard with Ammon Shea, author of Reading the OED, Dr. Brown thought that many words would make great poem titles.
"It took me a few months to get around to doing it seriously, but, once I began, I produced two runs through the alphabet in about five or six months," said Dr. Brown. He is hoping to publish 26 of the poems as a chapbook, a 20-40 page book produced by a small press.
Dr. Brown is currently working on poems based on the Catholic liturgical calendar. The calendar encompasses the Catholic lectionary, a set of readings for the weekday mass, and any holy days, which are Memorials, Feasts, and High Holy Days, such as Christmas and Easter. Brown writes the poem, drawing from saints' legends, as well as biblical stories, from a specific day.
"The most difficult part is trying to take a literal story and turn it into a metaphor, so I don't simply retell the story," said Dr. Brown. "I also seem to be drawing on my childhood more for these poems, so I'm glad that I've been able to tap into that."
Throughout the semester, Dr. Brown writes short essays for scholarly publications. Forthcoming from Kennesaw State University Press is the work They Love to Tell the Story: Five Contemporary Authors Take on the Gospels. He was also recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Dr. Brown feels that these writings help him reflect on his teaching and other issues in education. He said, "They help me feel like I'm part of the conversation. The poetry world can be so large that it's difficult to find a place there. These publications offer me more of that, as well as quick feedback, so I know someone is reading what I write."
Dr. Brown also works on scholarship during the summer, though recently he has shifted to focus more on teaching. This past summer, Dr. Brown did a survey of English major graduates from Lee to see what kinds of jobs they hold after graduating. He plans to follow up to see the difference in what students plan to do and why after graduation and what they actually end up doing.
"This type of work is already showing up in my classes, so I now talk about the discipline as being much broader than I used to think of it," said Dr. Brown.
Dr. Brown received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Mississippi with a dissertation that dealt with Mark Twain’s influence on Kurt Vonnegut. He also has a Master’s in English from East Tennessee State University, a Master’s in Library Science from the University of Alabama, and a Bachelor’s Degree from Milligan College.
For more information about Dr. Brown and his work, visit www.kevinbrownwrites.com.