Staff Spotlight: The Poetic Talents of Chevelyn Curtis

Chevelyn Curtis

If you’ve ever explored the Georgia Museum of Art, chances are that you’ve seen Chevelyn Curtis countless times. Although she often comes off as shy and reserved, those who know her know that she has a great sense of humor as well as a contagious smile to go with it. Her friendly personality allows anyone around her to feel comfortable and welcome. Chevelyn has been working at the museum for years, first as a part-time security guard and now as a full-time security guard. Recently, she created her own blog to showcase her poetry: http://IHeartPoetrySite.Wordpress.com. Chevelyn was kind enough to sit down with us and give us some backstory about her writing and experiences.

How long have you been writing poetry?

I started in my sophomore year in high school, so about… 13 years? I don’t write as much as I used to though. I’m always busy.

Reading your poetry, we see that a few of them seem to revolve around the theme of love. Do you often hesitate to post something so intimate online?

Not really. This is actually the first time that I’ve actually posted anything online. I’ve entered contests—I never won—but every poem that I sent in has been published in a book. I’m pretty used to my work being out there for the public to see.

Some people use poetry as an outlet. There’s no denying that putting your heart on a sheet of paper can result in so much relief, whether emotional or mental. Is that why you write?

Yes. I was teased a lot so, I reached a breaking point and almost thought about committing suicide. I found writing—and the fun thing is that it was a school assignment, and I ended up liking it. I was able to write off the top of my head. I didn’t need to think about it. 

On your site, the first thing you see is a headline that reads: “My Love for Poetry Will Hopefully Inspire You in Some Way.” If you desire that readers take something away from your writing, what do you want it to be?

I’m hoping that it’ll inspire people to write more and express themselves. If my poem could help them in any way, I’m all for that too. Actually, I do have a poem about being teased that I will be posting soon.

Does being a security guard for the Georgia Museum of Art fuel your artistic side? I imagine that poets would love to be around beautiful art because both serve to tell stories.

Honestly, no. I do like the paintings we have here, but they don’t really inspire me or fuel me to write.

Is it hard for you to be so vulnerable on paper and then to upload your innermost thoughts for even strangers to see? Does that kind of courage come naturally to you? Or is it something you had to work toward?

I’m definitely still working on that. I’m very shy and I’m like… the quiet one. Unless I’m comfortable around you. Then I’m a completely different person. This takes a lot of courage because it took me a long time to actually act on this. I’ve been thinking about making a blog for the longest. 

In your biography on your website, you thank viewers for making your dreams come true. What exactly are your dreams and aspirations?

Well, my main goal was to publish a book of my poems. However, I kept hitting roadblocks with that because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money to get it done and I didn’t have the money for it anyway. So that’s when the blog idea popped into my head. But my goal, in short, is to just get my poetry out there. The only downside to writing my own book would be the book tours and reading in front of people. I hate public speaking.

On your blog in your introduction page, you mention that you’ve endured bullying. Thankfully, you found writing. What advice do you have to people who also endure hardships that you’ve endured?

Well, I couldn’t escape harassment because I got it at school and at home. I didn’t have an outlet, and one day I told my mom about the assignment and she just told me to write what I felt. Doing that really helped, so I would say, “find an outlet.” You can write, draw, or sing… Do whatever you can to get it out.

Marq Norris
Intern, Department of Communications

A Poem by Billy Collins

The experience of visiting a museum is more than educational-- it can be quite personal and transformative. This poem by Billy Collins captures the unique, awe-inspiring and sometimes humbling experience of visiting a museum and submerging oneself complete in its great works of art.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art

I will now step over the soft velvet rope

and walk directly into this massive Hudson River

painting and pick my way along the Palisades

with a stick I snapped off a dead tree.

I will skirt the smoky, nestled towns

and seek the path that leads always outward

until I become lost, without hope

of ever finding the way back to the museum.

I will stand on the bluffs in nineteenth-century clothes,

a dwarf among rock, hills, and flowing water,

and I will fish from the banks in a straw hat

which will feel like a brush stroke on my head.

And I will hide in the green covers of forests

so no appreciator of Fredric Edwin Church,

leaning over the soft velvet rope,

will spot my tiny figure moving in the stillness

and cry out, pointing for the others to see,

and be thought mad and led away to a cell

where there is no vaulting landscape to explore,

none of this birdsong that halts me in my tracks,

and no wide curving of this river that draws

my steps toward the misty vanishing point.

copyright, Billy Collins, 1987

Art Around Athens

If you're not making it to "A Soulful Celebration" tonight, and we certainly hope you are, here are some other events going on around Athens this evening...



At 3:30 p.m. in room 100 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, Frances Van Keuren will deliver the next Visual Culture Colloquim (VCC) lecture, "Drawings of Figures in Ancient Costumes by Thomas Hope (1769-1831): Their Sources in Engravings from Books in Hope's Library."

From 5 to 6 p.m., in room S150 of the Dodd, UGA Costa Rica is sponsoring a presentation by art professors Scott Belville and Kinsey Branham and local artist Mary Engel on the Maymester 2010 Costa Rica study abroad art program. The program offers five courses in studio art and, as the Web site says:

Students will experience and reflect upon the nature and culture of Costa Rica through study, direct observation and interaction with its people, natural and built environment, and institutions of culture. As a result of their experiences and reflections, the students will create a process-portfolio of works of art, journal entries, sketches, and exhibition that demonstrates the ways their art and ways of thinking have been informed by their international study experience.

Finally, at 7 p.m. at Ciné, the Georgia Review presents a poetry reading featuring Keith Ratzlaff, whose book "Dubious Angels" is an ekphrastic work comprised of poems written in response to Paul Klee paintings.

Ratzlaff won the 1996 Anhinga Prize for "Poetry for Man under a Pear Tree." His other books include "Across the Known World" (Loess Hills Press, 1997) and two more volumes from Anhinga Press: "Dubious Angels: Poems after... Paul Klee" (2005), based on the artist’s late drawings and paintings; and "Then, a Thousand Crows" (2009). Copies of Ratzlaff’s works will be available at the reading, courtesy of Judy Long’s Byhalia Books. Of the generously illustrated "Dubious Angels," Georgia Review editor Stephen Corey has written, “Keith Ratzlaff’s long-established and distinctive voice—gentle, playful, yet snap-your-head-back incisive and moving—is both present in and altered by his deep confrontation with Paul Klee’s complex simple renderings of offbeat angels. To have these poems side by side with the artworks is a visceral pleasure and a boon to both artists.” Ratzlaff’s poems and reviews have appeared in Poetry Northwest, which gave him its Theodore Roethke Award, and in many other journals, including the Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, New England Review, and North American Review. Also, his poems and essays have been included in such anthologies as "The Best American Poetry 2009," "The Pushcart Prize XXXI" (2007), "A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry" (2003), and "In the Middle of the Middle West: Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland" (2003). Keith Ratzlaff is professor of English at Central College in Pella, Iowa.

Rita Dove in Athens

Former poet laureate Rita Dove will be in Athens today and tomorrow. Today, there will be a book signing at the Tate Student Center Theater at 3:30 p.m, and tonight, Dove will read “How Does a Shadow Shine” at 7p.m. at the Morton Theatre (link). The Athens-Clarke Public Library auditorium will host “Café au Libris: An Evening with Rita Dove,” which includes a book signing and a conversation with the author at 7p.m. on Friday. Dove has a long history with the Georgia Review, the main organizers for the event. Her poem "Robert Schumann, or: Musical Genius Begins with Affliction” appeared in the award-winning journal's fall 1978 issue, before the publication of her first full-length collection. She has been a contributing editor to the journal as well as an advisory board member since 1993. Dove has written around 9 books of poetry and several more books on politics, history, family issues, etc. Her most recent book, Sonata Mulattica, follows a biracial violin prodigy who influenced and inspired Beethoven but never received credit. You can ask her all about her new book and old books today and tomorrow!