Coe College issued the following announcement on October 25.
Amanda MooreIn the silent stillness of dawn, Amanda Moore ’97 surfs the frigid and thunderous crash of the Pacific Ocean waves. While others relish their last few hours of sleep, Amanda’s heart races with creativity pulsing from the ocean and into her eager fingertips ready to write.
“I go to the ocean every morning. I’m a native Midwesterner, and I never thought I would fall in love with the ocean. I only came to the beach a few times a year growing up, but now I live five blocks from the ocean. I have a deep relationship with the ocean these days,” Amanda said.
She sits to write and read poetry after surfing. As a teacher, the early hours of the morning are a significant part of her artistic process. This time alone largely contributed to Amanda writing her first manuscript. “Requeening” is a collection of bee poems and a 2020 National Poetry Series winner. Bees are the overarching metaphor representing motherhood, matriarchy and grief through elements of prose, poetry and lyric essay.
Fate would have Amanda receive such good tidings from the ocean — Ocean Vuong that is.
“I was teaching one morning, and I kept getting these missed phone calls from a number I didn’t recognize. I listened to a voicemail of Ocean Vuong calling, and I just knew at that moment what it was. I burst into tears. I was so excited. It's been a long time coming,” she said. “To have Ocean in particular be the judge who selected my work was very meaningful. He’s the most generous soul, and I’m interested in his work with poetry and nonfiction. My book has some of those hybrids.”
It was a big deal for Amanda to be recognized by Ocean for a number of reasons. First, Ocean is a critically acclaimed poet, essayist and novelist. Secondly, the manuscript is the first collection of poems Amanda wrote following a break from writing after earning an MFA in poetry from Cornell University. Her previous work has been published in journals and anthologies, but for the years that followed, Amanda focused on her teaching career, got married, bought a house and raised her daughter.
“It took me a while to find my way back to poetry. When I did I got very serious. I spent a whole summer really intensely working on this manuscript. Poetry has always been a present force in my life. It’s how I process the world and how I see things and think. I never stopped reading and writing poetry, even when I took a break from publishing,” she said.
“Peanut butter, peanut butter / how you make my heart a flutter” is one of Amanda’s earliest works from the third grade. She first was mesmerized by the sound and rhythm of poetry as a child in Chicago. She continued to enjoy poetry throughout the years, but it wasn’t until she arrived at Coe College that it ignited a lifelong passion.
“I remember being in the Stewart Memorial Library and reading. I was really into the women poets and the ways they were able to voice the particular experiences of their lives. There was sound and music in their work. Coe was a place where I began thinking about the formal aspects of poems and thought more about the content and how to push,” Amanda said.
Coe turned out to be an immersive experience beyond the pages of a book. It turned her onto the craft of writing. Amanda was in Retired Professor Emeritus of English Charles Aukema’s workshops for a year where she wrote alongside experimental poets for the first time.
“They were definitely all writing in free verse, using the page in new ways, pushing boundaries, and that was very mind-opening to me. It’s fun to think of myself from third grade to now as someone who is always changing and exploring,” she said.
Whether it was evolving as a reader in a Victorian literature class or discovering her favorite poet is William Butler Yates because of a seminar with Wendy Bashant, Amanda continues to fall back on the readings and lessons she learned at Coe.
As a matter of fact, she safeguards her history of English notes from Retired Whipple Professor Emeritus of English Bob Drexler’s class, and she reflects on her courses with Retired Professor Emeritus of English and African American Studies James H. Randall when she teaches “Beloved” in her own classroom. Not to mention, she revisits the works from French essayist Michel de Montaigne that she read in her writing seminar with Retired Armstrong Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric Bob Marrs.
“I don’t remember what I read in high school, but I remember everything from Coe, particularly the professors and the relationships I had with them. Forming those close relationships with professors who were really interested in my work as a writer and development as a human was really key to my success,” she said.
The power of these mentorships extended outside of the classroom and into her experience working in the Coe Writing Center with then-director Bob Marrs. He traveled with students to attend conferences, presentations and workshops. Later, Bob Drexler was responsible for helping Amanda teach at a university in Thailand for a year after graduation.
“Both of them really gave me a sense of how writing can exist in a world outside of college, what a profession and a writing life can look like,” she said.
Amanda graduated from Coe with English and Spanish majors and a writing minor.
“I always urge my students to look at small liberal arts colleges. Those intimate relationships in a school help you connect with the campus community,” she said.
In addition to teaching, Amanda is a board member for the Marin Poetry Center and co-editor for Poetry Sunday at Women’s Voices for Change. She is writing a new manuscript with water poems guided by her daily early morning surfing, and she is translating Costa Rican poetry books she collected from her Coe study abroad term to Costa Rica.
“Requeening” will be printed by HarperCollins Publishers and available for sale on October 26, 2021.
Original source can be found here.
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