An audience of students from Living Writers, a class that reads novels and then attends live readings by the writers, listened carefully as poet Grady Chambers read a selection of works from “North American Stadiums,” his very first collection of poems. 

Chambers, who was a Master of Fine Arts student at SU, said that his instinct when starting his poems is to try and tell some kind of story. These stories are often about the people he grew up with and the places where they grew up. 

His poetry delves into themes of memory, loss and an appreciation for the world around him. In addition to setting his poems in Syracuse and central New York, where he has been a resident for six years, Chambers said many of his poems are about growing up in Chicago and the Midwest. 

“It’s the place where history and memory is most alive for me,” Chambers said. 

He added that he often refers to the poems in “North American Stadiums” as love letters to the people and the places that he grew up with. When he returns to Chicago, Chambers said memories about friends and events that took place in that city linger in his mind. 

Poetry, he said, gives him the opportunity to keep those people and experiences alive not only for himself but for others to connect to. 

The opportunity to come to Syracuse University to read his work to college students was rewarding for Chambers, especially because he wants to break the stigma that poetry is inaccessible and impossible to understand. 

“What was wonderful for me … to get to come here and talk to (college students) about it is hopefully to help them see that not all poetry is the inscrutable thing that they may have experienced it to be up until this point,” Chambers said.  

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Chambers, who teaches college students as well, said that many students first experience poetry in high school classrooms where the language and themes in the writing often feels distant to students.  

He said he didn’t want poetry to be something students needed to decode, rather have the work be digestible after reading it only one time.  

Freshman Jenna Cammerino said listening to Chambers read his poetry allowed her to understand and appreciate the poem a lot more than she had before. 

The ability to connect to themes in Chambers’ poetry is why sophomore Cassandra Rodriguez said she enjoyed reading his book. She also said his focus on sense of place resonated with her, especially when he wrote about hating the South but then growing fond of it after moving to New York. 

In this way, Rodriguez directly related to his poetry because she said she hated the heat in Miami, where she grew up, but it wasn’t until coming to Syracuse that she began to love her hometown. 

“I like how he talks about place in a way that when you go away from your home and when you come back, there’s this beauty about it that you never noticed before,” Rodriguez said. 

Published on October 23, 2019 at 11:32 pm