Teacher with poetry books.
GREENVILLE – Sometimes writers find a collection of work can take years to create while other pieces are inspired quickly. For Mamie Morgan, a poet and former poetry teacher with the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities, she found inspiration to be both slow and fast while working on her first two poetry books, “Everyone I’ve Danced with is Dead” and “My Husband Is Learning To Draw.”
Morgan’s smaller work “My Husband is Learning to Draw” was written quickly as she watched her husband Alan Hester, who is a retired U.S. Marine Green Beret, take up drawing for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was interesting watching a middle-aged man who was really high up in the military draw a picture or make a painting for the first time,” Morgan said.
“I had never written about him before and that came very easily by witnessing my husband do this thing he’s never done before. It is the most literal title ever but it picks up a lot of motifs of the art world, the military world and how sometimes we can be siloed in our walks of life until we meet people who are different from us.”
For Morgan’s other work, “Everyone I Danced with is Dead,” she said it took over a decade to write. “When you are trying to build a collection of 40, 50, 60 poems, it’s hard to know what the book (is),” Morgan said. “It doesn’t function in the same way as a novel with a beginning, middle and end, so I struggled a lot in my 20s and early 30s in just figuring out what a book looks like. I was also really busy as a high school teacher and waitress.”
Since Morgan started work on “Everyone I Danced with is Dead” in her mid- to late-20s and finished when she was 39, she said it felt like she was 10 different people in this book. “In some ways, it is a coming-of-age book,” Morgan said. “It’s just poems that are cobbled together about a young woman learning to be alive in the world. They are all told (by) a first person speaker or narrator. (There are) lots of different voices kind of grappling with what it means to be a girl.”
Morgan will discuss “Everyone I Danced with is Dead” with Patrick Whitfill on April 25 at 6 p.m. at Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg. The event is free to attend. For more information, visit hubcity.org/events.
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Written by Jeannie Putnam
Jeannie Putnam, a dedicated writer at the Greenville Journal, brings to light the achievements of former SC Governor’s School teacher Mamie Morgan. With a commendable background in poetry and teaching, Morgan’s journey in creating her two poetry books is a testament to her dedication to the craft.
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