Samantha Schaefer’s poems don’t always appear on paper. Some of them are written on animal bones.
The Columbia alum read from several poems Wednesday, Sept. 30, during the first meeting of the Efroymson Reading Series of the semester.
“I started off with covering the bones in pre-existing text, and then scraping words off with an exacto knife,” Schaefer said, “I would use paper mache. Every bone is different.”
The Efroymson Reading Series invites award-winning writers from Chicago, including faculty, to share their work and experience with students.
The first reading of the semester featured Lisa Fishman, a novelist and professor in the School of Communication, and Schaefer, who earned her MFA in poetry in 2014. More than 50 people attended the packed event.
Alex DeCroix, a senior film and television major, said it was eye-opening to hear from the writers. It “shocks you into action and shocks into writerly awareness,” DeCroix said.
Fisherman read from her book “Write Back Now!” Her debut novel explores a girl who has moved from place to place and reflects on experiences, memories, and what comes next, the Chronicle previously reported.
Fisherman’s book is formatted where there are only small amounts of text on each page, sometimes as short as a single sentence. The book shows students that novels can be experimental and that they do not need to look a certain way, she said.
“You think a novel might look one way, but maybe you are coming to it fiction, as a poet, or as a songwriter, who writes smaller increments,” Fishman said.
Nana Flores, a senior creative writing major, said she felt inspired by Fishman’s words that “not every novel has to look the same.”
Kyra Henry, a senior graphic design major, also was inspired by the experimental format, through Schaefer’s work. “Bones were inspiring for me, writing on a different media,” opposed to writing on paper, Henry said.
To Schaefer, bones mean more than a place to write poems. They mean sustainability and healing, a means of representing the actual process of what it feels like to write and compose a poem,” she said, echoing an interview she gave to Columbia’s literacy magazine, Allium.
The next Efroymson Reading Series will take place on Oct. 19 at The Hive from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Melissa Albert, a Columbia alum who wrote the New York Times bestseller “The Hazel Wood” will be the speaker.
Fishman said events like these are important for the Columbia community because it is “wonderful when students can come together and see other students who are creative makers and to see people who began just as they did, as students.”
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