CM Burroughs, Associate Professor of Poetry in the English and Creative Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago speaks of the art of teaching writers how to write. CM explains process as well as the soul of learning to write as a student.
Interview by Kaitlyn Palmer
CM, thank you for the opportunity to engage and learn from you within the framework of this interview. Upon taking and completing your class in spring 2019, I experienced a very rare feeling regarding my work as well as my identification with being, a writer. I continued to hear your words; the poem does not always have to be poetic. Sometimes, the poem is in the telling of the story. I ask, how should we, as writers who are learning, tell the story?
CM is the author of The Vital System. As written by Douglas Kearney, “with gorgeous horror, Burroughs’s debut thrusts the body forward as an intelligence, a syntax, a theater. The narrator of these poems seems to come apart before my eyes; yet she never disintegrates—she teems. Here is vivid grief, livid vulnerability and bristling sensuality. Here is terrible resilience and dangerous vitality.”
I experienced The Vital System summer of 2019 after being taught by CM Burroughs. I was stunned by the emotion I was able to gather from the body being depicted in a way I’d never encountered prior to this collection. I continue to process the images and voice. It is now fall of 2019. CM’s poems caused me to travel to an unfamiliar — intimidating at times — pleasurable space.
At the time, my engagement with poetry was one that relied heavily on surrealism. As a writer and instructor of writing, what exists within the space of teaching writers to write? Let’s begin here.
How would you describe the art of teaching writers to write? Considering the complexities, the stories, and multiple dimensions that arrive in class with the students.
Each student comes to me at a different level in their development as a writer. My goal is to teach the writers toward their potential, toward the poetics that are just out of reach—I teach them through challenging their reading knowledge and their writing innovation. Beyond the platform of teaching toward potential, empathy and compassion are the most important tools I take into the classroom. These tools are part of what allow me to meet each writer at their current level of ability and discover how best to challenge their thinking and writing.
Toni Morrison alluded “if there’s a book that you want to read, and it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” When teaching writing, how much or how little do Morrison’s words resonate within the art of teaching readers and writers how to write?
Morrison’s words are true to me, but I don’t believe in asking students to achieve what they cannot yet imagine. A great amount of study and devotion is needed to know what 1) has not been written, and 2) what one wants to, or, better, needs to read. Any writer would do well to study widely and carefully, and to write to her most true and urgent subjects.
If you could tell your younger writing – self anything, what would it be? You may consider your undergraduate or graduate years as a writer.
I would tell her to practice reading daily, to develop reading as meditation, and to practice writing as she practices all daily to-do’s. I suppose I knew those things as an undergraduate—writing was vital to me years prior to my college career—but these are the mantras that one must repeat to herself, mantras that one must ever bear in mind.
When teaching, is there an idea of literary success that is needed for writers to create a vision for themselves, post formal education.
I am a writer who participates in the business of writing, but I do not interest myself in notions of success and failure—that is better left for Hollywood. When you say “literary success,” I think of New Yorker darlings and Times Best-Seller lists. These are wonderful modes of impressing literature upon larger audiences, readers and would-be readers alike. However, I do not think that any writer should be concerned with the idea of fame. It has nothing to do with the honest work of being a writer—there are no flashbulbs when a writer toils at her desk. For example, a writer may greatly admire Toni Morrison and want to emulate her, but one must work toward her own individual potential. To be plain, one’s duty is to be a writer, which requires study, writing well, publishing widely, publishing books, and trying to articulate something urgent for herself and others. A writer’s vision of herself ought to begin in whatever it is that she is writing, and that writing will help her to form her self.
What is the most challenging component when teaching writing to students who desire their version of success, to be birthed from their art?
I believe I touched upon this in the last answer—couldn’t help myself!
Would you consider writing to be a learned skill or an intrinsic gift? Why?
Both. I believe there is a natural inclination in writers to write! Following that, “talent” is a measure of how well one uses the tools of writing in unison with her subjects. Those tools are learned and refined, of course, but there is intuition that results in the illuminating concert of expression.
Can writing bring forth a sense of order to one’s life? There is a sense of solitude that may accompany writing as an art form.
Do you mean a “sense of order” or “sense order”? The latter phrase is attracting, but I’ll answer the former. Order is a term that resonates for me. I absolutely apply it to my mental and corporeal lives—my home, my mind; I thrive on clarity and order, organization. It is how I function. Writing must be a part of that, because writing is a vast part of me. Order, and writing, does require some solitude–there is beauty to creating my own noise and the perfect conditions *for* free thought.
When teaching writing, what is necessary for you as the professor, and what is unnecessary?
This is a bit vague, so I’ll answer for what I need from students. Professionalism. I am old-school, so I appreciate the common manners of centuries past; the decorum of letter-writing has especially been lost to the culture of emailing and texting. Once, I received an email from a student who I did not know that read, “Hey Prof, can I get added to your class?” Well, no. I’d much prefer,
“Hello Professor Burroughs, my name is ____, and I am a _____ major in need of joining your [course title for class] to fulfill credits for graduation. I understand that this may not be possible, but I appreciate any consideration you can give to my case. I have attached a writing sample to aid in your decision-making. Thank you. Sincerely, Student Who Impresses Professor with Etiquette.”