The Importance of Being a Well-Rounded Creative
by Poetry Editor Andrew Kelly
Image: “A Walk Across Darkness” by Edward Supranowicz
I read a lot of poetry. I’m enrolled in two poetry courses as well as working on a poetry thesis on the side. Being around it so much, my writing process can sometimes become a mix of reading, listening to, and writing poetry. I’m prone to getting tunnel vision and letting fiction or nonfiction fade from my peripheral. Contrary to popular belief, this pattern of minimal variation does not yield a militaristic mastery of poetics, but rather causes me to get a bit stuck, stagnant, and worst of all, uninventive. Things start getting done without intention. My poems make it to workshop because they are due— whether I am proud of them is a different story. And if you are anything like me, you get frustrated when you cannot seem to do what you are good at.
Now don’t get me wrong, I value the importance of having a go-to medium as much as the next guy. It grounds our identities as creative people. It got us to where we are today. But I also know that it doesn’t take long for comfort zones to turn into trash compactors. I see it all the time in myself or my peers. We can do our thing so much that we get fatigued from our passion. Classic burn-out. I do believe, however, that there are ways to combat this fatigue without taking a break from creative work altogether.
During my five years on the track & field team here at the University of New Hampshire, I learned a great deal about strength and conditioning. We lifted three times a week, every exercise mapped out by our coach with specific weights or difficulty levels calculated to build our strength and explosivity. Everything felt so intentional and meticulous. But since I was primarily a high jumper (over the bar) and long jumper (into the sand pit), I wondered why I still had days where I was doing mostly core or upper body exercises. I felt like the more time I spent doing these workouts, the less I was improving my jumping muscles. Shouldn’t I be working out my legs every lift?
What I learned to embrace over time was the science of being a well-rounded athlete. By finding a balance between all my major muscular groups, I actually found more success in jumping, more joy when leg day rolled around, less overuse injuries to my fast-twitch muscles, as well as more confidence on competition day that I could do any event I was needed for. I digress.
One thing I love about the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire is that we are required to take some elective courses outside of our concentration. As a poet, there is much to learn from taking fiction and nonfiction courses. At the end of the day, any artistic pursuit is in the name of telling some kind of story. The more mediums you try your hand at, the more dynamic your ability to storytell becomes. My elective in screenwriting has allowed me to tap in to the image and scene at the most condensed level. My nonfiction seminar allowed me to think about my own origin story, and in turn, the stories I’m most fit to tell at this point of my life. In my fiction workshop, I worked on dialogue and how to chisel out a character the right way.
Trying a new medium, and really leaning in to the new set of rules and guidelines that the medium comes packaged with, can add a bunch of useful items to your creative toolbox that you can use when returning to your specialty. It’s challenging, but also just plain enjoyable, which is why I write in the first place. Branching out is an option that you can take when you are in a rut or not. The stakes are low. Experiment with something that makes you feel like you’re back at stage one in a strange sort of way. If you ask me, that means you’re probably doing this whole ‘creative’ thing right.
Andrew Kelly (he/him/his) is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of New Hampshire. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor for Barnstorm Journal. He lives with some of his best pals in Dover, NH, where he also is working on his first collection of poems. His work can be found in The Shore, Streetcake Magazine, Eunoia Review, Yas Press, and more.
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Lithuanian/Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has had over 700 poems published and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.