This week’s post is about writing but more about where my learning about writing happened.
I am a proud graduate of Goddard College’s MFA program. I graduated from the Port Townsend campus in 2012 and the two years I spent working on my masters of fine arts degree were the best investment in myself and my writing. MFA programs are not for everyone and not every program is the same. Goddard was special. Different. They heard a different beat and it was one I was happy to dance to for two years of my life.
Today, I learned that my beloved Goddard College is closing its doors for good.
In this situation there are plenty to blame. I heard the ins and outs from current and former faculty of the mismanagement and, in short, bone-headed decisions that lead to this closing. But this isn’t a rant about ill thought-out and made decisions. This is about saying good-bye to something that is so dear and precious to me.
I started my masters program on my birthday in 2010. It was a turbulant year for newspapers, especially in the Gannett chain. I was a reporter at The Shreveport Times at the time and in order for the multi-million dollar company to keep profits up for shareholders, we all had to take an unpaid week off from our jobs. They called it the furlough.
While it was absurd, taking unpaid time off for millionaires and shareholders to earn even more money, I was thankful for it. It allowed me to go to school every semester and not use the actual paid and limited time off. Goddard was a low residency program and in the top 10 MFA programs for several years according to Poets & Writers Magazine. That meant that every six months, I’d attend a 10-day residency where I’d meet my professor(s) and plan out what those “packets” of work would look like.
I knew, from the first day, my life was about to change. It would not look the same by the time Goddard was done with me. And it didn’t. It doesn’t. For this I am the most grateful.
It was like going to Hogwarts! I’d fly into Seattle SeaTac airport, be picked up and then driven to campus (later on, the Seattle students would just drive us while some of us rented cars). The drive included either going on a ferry or driving around the peninsula with its gorgeous views. Then we would literally be placed in houses at Fort Warden in Port Townsend, WA and live there for the 10 days.
This place, it changed me. It pushed me to be unapologetic in my creative work. It taught me that it’s not about one poem or one story but a body of work, and overall exploration of life. It introduced me to writers I would not have otherwise read. It healed me when a family friend died right as we were driving to campus. That was the semester we all needed to be healed.
I knew, from the first day on campus, my life was about to change. It would not look the same by the time Goddard was done with me. And it didn’t. It doesn’t. For this I am the most grateful.
The decision to close the school feels like a death, like one of the lights of my life has been extingushed and life is again changing. Currently, I am facing so many end of cycles and this feels like more confirmation that my life is going to change, just like the first time I stepped on campus. However, this isn’t a choice. I don’t choose this, but I have no say in it just the same.
Some of you who subscribe to this newsletter were also at Goddard with me. We went to lunch together or we had the same adviser. We talked about books and read our work to each other. We went to the same salons. Had a drink or two or several together. We celebrated that time in our lives, a sense of freedom that, in hindsight, I wish we could have bottled.
I am feeling all these feels at the moment. And I’m not sure I’m making sense here. I know that I am feeling these deep feelings as I answer questions about a reading I’m doing in three days for a poetry book I’ve published. This was the life I dreamed about at Goddard and Goddard helped me get there. Here. To this moment. I am a published writer, a poet, an essayist, a fiction writer, a college professor. I got here because Goddard said yes to me. And I said yes right back. This reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite writers, one I was introduced to at Goddard, Clarice Lispector.
“All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.”
I was born at Goddard. My birthplace is no more.
I don’t do well with endings. Conclusions have always been tricky for me. Even now, I don’t know how to end this newsletter. I don’t know how to say good-bye to this or even how not to be sad about it. Because it’s not a place I’m saying good bye to; its the part of me that still lingers in its memory. The echo. The girl standing on the steps of the first building she saw, wearing a puffy pink jacket and blue jeans on her 32nd birthday who waited for her life to start — that’s who is writing this missive at the moment. That’s who is in mourning. That is who is crying.
That is who is writing, good-bye.
-Icess
Oh Icess, you made me cry. In a good way, because I needed to. I was so stunned when I saw the email from Goddard I didn't know what to feel or do. So many of us were born, as writers, on that Port Townsend campus!