The "Writing Sems Guerillas" is exactly the type of organization you secretly want to exist at your college, because, well, it's part of what college is about. They're silly, they're vaguely anti-establishment (the meetings are at Hopkins Deli) and they stress the importance of inebriation for literature.
One can't blame them -- after all, students of Doug Basford will no doubt remember the story of Hart Crane's writing method of getting drunk on cheap wine late at night while playing the hand-crank Victrola.
The first email sent out by the head honchos (David Dittell, Abby Gibbon and Yu Miyagawa, all senior Writing Seminars majors), began with the unmistaken announcement: "This is not an official Writing Sems e-mail." The message was an invitation to a gathering, in response to the department's cancellation of the Christmas Party, one of the few Hopkins-sponsored chances the undergraduates had to interact with faculty and peers in a casual setting.
From the stiff-collared Hopkins Club, the Guerillas decided to relocate to a more undergraduate friendly locale: CVP. The meetings were a success -- according to the founders, around 40 people showed up for the initial party and were coming back each week in hordes for a dedicated happy hour. They even got the place to name a drink "The Stephen Dixon."
Somewhere in the midst of cheap beer and salty snacks, ideas were starting to germinate. Enough people were coming back each week that a community seemed possible, a collective student voice that could initiate change. "After it became obvious that Writing Seminars could actually mean something to people," founder Dave Dittell recounts, "our goals got a little bigger."
Last Monday, as you might've gathered from the ubiquitous flyers around campus, was the "Second-Ever Undergraduate Reading." I do remember, for the record, an odd undergrad reading here and there in my earlier years, but they were in the stuffy Tudor and Stuart Room, and, come to think of it, I can't remember anyone else being there besides myself and a bottle of Manischewitz.
The modest Dittell credits co-founder Abby Gibbon with the broader vision for the future of the Guerillas: "I like to think of myself as being somewhat personable and even have some ideas myself, but Abby, she's something different. I could start a cult, she could run the Catholic Church."
Ideas were thrown back and forth: improvements that could be made to the major, a summer scholarship perhaps, and then, Dittell recalls, the idea of a reading came up. "It was pretty much inconceivable to us," he says, "that we had a creative major with no way to showcase the talents of the students. There are campus magazines, but they don't let everybody in and there's no equivalent of the open mic."
And that talent has been loud and clear at these two readings. This week's featured two fiction-writing vagrants, Liz Blackford and Josh Shapero, both seniors, and Kat Brewer, a poet. The works were smart, funny, and engaging. The crowd (OK, so many were friends of the writers, but who cares?) ate them up.
Best of all, there is no sense of competition or conceit to the gatherings. No pipe smoking sweater-wearing kids reading from Pound's Cantos. The work is down to earth, and it reflects the honed craft of these diligent students of poetry and prose.
As for the group's future, things are looking bright. "Everyone involved has been really enthusiastic, so I'm confident that the guerillas will live on" Gibbon says. So far, she adds, professors have been receptive to the suggestions posed, most noticeably Dave Smith, the new chair of the department.
The only downside to the whole affair is that it didn't get started years ago. The core members of the Guerillas are all seniors, and hope to find some younger disciples to keep the tradition going past this year. Though we may not be here to see it through, there is something comforting in knowing that future impressionable writing students will have it better than we did. This year's senior writers are slowly but surely building a legacy, and it's served with a tall glass of beer.
The Writing Seminars Committee meets Mondays at 6 p.m. at the Hopkins Deli at 110 39th St., followed by a reading at 7 p.m. Next week's reading features David Dittell and Christian Recca.
