Jack Collom

{{Short description|American poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue}}

{{Infobox writer

| image = 2017 Jack Collom (photo by Ken Abbott).jpg

| caption = Jack Collom, was an American poet, essayist, and educator.

| image_size =

| alt =

| birth_name = John Aldridge Collom

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1931|11|8}}

| birth_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|2017|7|2|1931|11|8}}

| death_place = Boulder, Colorado, U.S.

| occupation = {{flatlist|

Poet
teacher
essayist

}}

| education = University of Colorado, BA and MA

| awards = NEA Poetry Fellowship (1980, 1990)Bounds, Amy (July 3, 2017) {{cite web|url=http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_31113500/jack-collom-boulder-poet-and-educator-remembered-great|title=Jack Collom, Boulder poet and educator, remembered for 'a great run of a life'|date=3 July 2017|publisher=digitalcamera.com}}

| notableworks =

| spouse = Edeltraud Maria Teresia Hopps (div. 1974)
Mara Meshak (div.)
Jennifer Heath

| children = Nathaniel, Christopher, Franz, Sierra

}}

John Aldridge Collom (November 8, 1931 – July 2, 2017) was an American poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue. Included among the twenty-five books{{cite web|url=http://denver.eventful.com/events/thepoetisin-poetinresidence-jack-collom-/E0-001-047053757-7|title="The Poet Is In" Poet-in-residence Jack Collom|website=Eventful}} he published during his lifetime were Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955–2000; Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community; and Second Nature, which won the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Poetry.{{cite web|url=http://www.naropa.edu/faculty/jack-collom.php|title=Jack Collom|website=www.naropa.edu|access-date=2017-07-04|archive-date=2017-07-02|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170702213146/http://www.naropa.edu/faculty/jack-collom.php|url-status=dead}} In the fields of education and creative writing, he was involved in eco-literature, ecopoetics, and writing instruction for children.

Life and work

Jack Collom was born John Aldridge Collom in Chicago on November 8, 1931.{{cite web|url=http://crist-mort.tributes.com/dignitymemorial/obituary/Jack-Aldridge-Collom-104946242|title=Jack Collom Obituary – Boulder, Colorado – Crist Mortuary|website=crist-mort.tributes.com|accessdate=3 July 2017}}{{cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jack-collom|title=Jack Collom|date=3 July 2017|website=Poetry Foundation}} He and his sister Jane Wodening grew up in the small town of Western Springs, Illinois,{{cite web|url=http://omniverse.us/featured-essay-jack-collom/|title=Featured Essay: Jack Collom – OmniVerse|website=omniverse.us}} spent much of his time birdwatching,{{cite web|url=http://www.woodlandpattern.org/archives/poems/?poem=139|title=Jack Collom · Poems · Woodland Pattern|website=www.woodlandpattern.org}} and over the years became an inveterate bird-watcher.{{cite web|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-931157-01|title=Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955–2000 (Reviewed)|publisher=Publishers Weekly}} Collom moved to Fraser, Colorado in 1947. He studied forestry at Colorado A&M College where he earned a B.S. in 1952.{{cite web|url=http://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/jack-collom|title=Jack Collom :: Foundation for Contemporary Arts|website=www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org}} Afterwards, he spent four years in the U.S. Air Force and he started writing poetry in 1955 while stationed in Tripoli, Libya.{{cite journal|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0924/lpoet.html|title=New Twist for Nature Poetry|first=M. S.|last=Mason|date=24 September 1990|journal=Christian Science Monitor}} His unit was next stationed at Neubiberg, a base just south of Munich in Bavaria. It is there he met his first wife (a native German) in 1956. Collom moved back to the US after his discharge from the military but soon returned to Germany for a brief time to get married. They naturalized back to America in 1959 where he worked in factories for twenty years while writing poetry.

Collom received his B.A. in English (1972) and M.A. in English literature (1974) from the University of Colorado where he had studied on the G.I. Bill. In 1974, he began teaching in the "Poetry-in-the-Schools" programs in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. In 1980, he began teaching poetry in the public schools of New York City, by way of the "Poets In Public Service" and "Teachers & Writers" programs.{{cite web|url=http://jacketmagazine.com/36/r-collom-hejinian-rb-grenier.shtml|title=Jacket 36 – Late 2008 – Jack Collom and Lyn Hejinian: "Situations, Sings" (collaborative poems), reviewed by Robert Grenier|website=jacketmagazine.com}} Collom continued to teach creative writing to children for the next 35 years in both elementary and secondary schools,{{cite web|url=http://www.thecafereview.com/fall-2014-poets-jack-collom/|title=Jack Collom – The Cafe Review|date=12 January 2017|publisher=}} where he developed a pedagogy for this type of educational approach.

{{quote|I think of my general approach as organic, inductive, building from the children's familiars up, rather than teaching them intricate forms to master, or attempting to initiate them into a sophisticated sensibility. Time enough for that, and to avoid its pitfalls, when and if they have written personally for some while, and of course writing personally in some strong sense is what the most developed poetry still is. Heavy programming from me at this point would draw out less of their particular gifts.{{cite web|url=https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/onteaching/how-i-teach-poetry-schools|title=How I Teach Poetry in the Schools|first=Jack|last=Collom|date=April 23, 2014|website=poets.org}}}}

Subsequently, Teachers & Writers Collaborative published three books of Collom's essays and commentary on this experience (which included the young students' poems), notably Poetry Everywhere and Moving Windows.

From 1966 to 1977, he published the work of many writers in a little magazine called "The". He was twice awarded Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2012). From 1986 until his death in 2017, Collom taught at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics as an adjunct professor where he shaped Writing Outreach, a community creative-writing project, into a course.{{cite web|url=http://www.jackkerouacschool.org/2013/02/13/folio-jks-faculty-reading-to-celebrate-recent-publications/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180406040329/http://www.jackkerouacschool.org/2013/02/13/folio-jks-faculty-reading-to-celebrate-recent-publications/|url-status=usurped|archive-date=April 6, 2018|title=FOLIO: JKS Faculty Reading to Celebrate Recent Publications|last=administrator|date=February 13, 2013|publisher=Jack Kerouac School /Folio: Events Newsletter}}{{cite web|url=http://magazine.naropa.edu/2011-fall/features/from-nature-to-nurture.php|title=From Nature to Nurture|website=magazine.naropa.edu|date=25 May 2023 }} In 1989 he pioneered Eco-Lit,{{cite web|url=http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_9/critiques/collom.htm|title=Exquisite Corpse – A Journal of Letters and Life|website=www.corpse.org}} one of the first ecology literature courses ever offered in the United States. Some of his accomplishments as an environmentalist-poet are documented in American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present.{{cite web|url=http://www.credoreference.com/book/ghael|title=American environmental leaders from colonial times to the present|first1=Anne|last1=Becher|first2=Joseph|last2=Richey|date=5 July 2017|publisher=Grey House Pub.|via=Open WorldCat}} His nature writings and essays about the environment were published in various venues, including ecopoetics,{{cite web|url=https://ecopoetics.wordpress.com|title=ecopoetics|website=ecopoetics}} The Alphabet of Trees: A Guide to Writing Nature Poetry, and ISLE, the journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.[https://academic.oup.com/isle/article-abstract/7/2/243/731906/In-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext Interdiscip Stud Lit Environ (2000) Volume 7 (Issue 2): 243]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/7.2.243

Published: 01 July 2000

He read and taught throughout the United States, in Mexico, Costa Rica, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. In 2008, he was the plenary speaker at the "Poetic Ecologies" conference at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2009, he led a three-week Creativity and Aging Program at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

He worked with numerous dancers, visual artists and musician/composers, and recorded three CDs: Calluses of PoetryCalluses of Poetry, audiobook/CD produced by Treehouse Press, 1996 {{ISBN|9780965187800}} and Colors Born of Shadow,Colors Born of Shadow, audiobook/CD produced by Treehouse Press, 1999 ASIN B000F7G0IY with Ken Bernstein, and Blue Yodel Blue Heron, with Dan Hankin and Sierra Collom.{{cite book|title=Blue Yodel Blue Heron|publisher=Baksun Books|year=2002|isbn=9781887997539}}

In 2001, his adopted hometown of Boulder, Colorado, declared and celebrated a "Jack Collom Day".

Personal life

{{quote box

|quote =I felt, and events have born out, that eco-lit was really an upcoming topic for the world. I was motivated by the cause of ecology—saving nature and ourselves from our own foolish extinction through pollution and overuse of resources—and the fact that it's an art with admirable philosophical achievements. But also for the fun of it. Humor is an important part of the class, and we can go from discussing the most tragic thing to cracking jokes. I'm for that kind of juxtaposition, which sometimes goes against expectations because people want to look upon nature very solemnly due to its beauty or endangered status. But I think humor is as deep as anything.

|source = —Jack Collom

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Collom was married three times. He had three sons by his first marriage. He had a daughter through a second marriage.

Jack Collom died in Boulder, Colorado on July 2, 2017.KGNU News (July 3, 2017) {{cite web|url=http://news.kgnu.org/2017/07/poet-jack-collom-1931-2017/|title=Poet Jack Collom: 1931–2017|date=3 July 2017|publisher=kgnu.org}}

Selected publications

;Poetry

Arguing with Something Plato Said. (Rocky Ledge Editions, 1990) {{ISBN|9780961437831}}
The Task. (Baksun Books, 1996) {{ISBN|9781887997065}}
Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955–2000. (Tuumba Press, 2001) {{ISBN|9781931157018}}
Exchanges of Earth and Sky. (Fish Drum Press, 2006) {{ISBN|9781929495085}}
Situations, Sings (with Lyn Hejinian). (Adventures in Poetry, 2007)Mohammad, K. Silem (April 23, 2008) {{cite web|url=http://www.constantcritic.com/k_silem_mohammad/situations-sings/|title=Constant Critic, Review: Situations, Sings|website=www.constantcritic.com}} {{ISBN|9780976161240}}
Second Nature. (Boulder, Co: Instance Press, 2012) {{ISBN|9781887997270}}

;Nonfiction

Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community (with Sheryl Noethe). (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1994; 2nd edition, 2007) {{ISBN|9780915924691}}
(contributor) Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments, (ed. Ron Padgett). (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1995; 2nd edition, 2007) {{ISBN|9780915924455}}
(editor) A Slow Flash of Light: An Anthology of Poems about Poetry. (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2008) {{ISBN|9780915924561}}
Moving Windows: Evaluating the Poetry Children Write. (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2000) {{ISBN|9780915924554}}
(contributor) The &NOW Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing (Illinois), 2013{{cite book|title=The &NOW AWARDS 2: The Best Innovative Writing|editor-first=Davis|editor-last=Schneiderman|date=25 May 2013|publisher=Lake Forest College Press|isbn = 978-0982315644}}

References

External links

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/90338/on-sound-and-rhythm On Sound and Rhythm: A Way to Start Teaching Poetry to Children and Young Adults] – an excerpt from Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community.
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70244/learning-the-chant-poem Learning the Chant Poem] an excerpt from Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments.

Category:1931 births

Category:2017 deaths

Category:University of Colorado alumni

Category:Naropa University faculty

Category:20th-century American poets

Category:21st-century American poets

Category:American nature writers

Category:American conservationists

Category:American male poets

Category:American naturalists

Category:American ornithologists

Category:Environmental writers