Sandra Beasley, Poet-in-Residence
It is no coincidence that Sandra Beasley found her way to Oxford. During the brief hour I spent with the fourth Ole Miss Poet-in-Residence, I felt that she embodied the utopian personality Oxford could possess.
She was courteous enough to invite me over to the Grisham House – the elegantly quaint residence the University grants to its poets-in-residence – to do our interview, and couldn’t have possibly exerted any more of that hospitable manner that walks in stride with ideal Southern charm.
Having grown up in Virginia and graduated from University of Virginia, Beasley said she already considered herself a Southern girl.
“However, it’s interesting – really interesting – to come to a place where the definition of the South is slightly different. You know - the flavors are different; the music is a little different; the politics are a little different. I appreciate broadening my understanding of what it means to be a Southerner,” Beasley said.
Beasley is a young poet who has achieved early success in her career, winning a number of honors and awards over the past few years for her writing, the most recent the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize honoring her collection of poems, “I Was the Jukebox.”
Her talent for writing is impressive, and not only in the form of poetry.
Beasley has proven herself as a columnist for The Washington Post and just finished writing a memoir entitled “Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life.”
By “just finished,” I mean she finished writing the final words in the Nashville airport before heading to Oxford little more than a week ago.
In her memoir, Beasley uses her humorous perspective on an uncommonly vast array of food allergies, making the fact that she once worked as a food critic all the more ironic.
“For the first week, it’s been about letting go of this recent project I’ve been working on pretty intensely, but it’s been easier to disconnect,” Beasley
said. “You don’t need to do nearly as much email-jockeying and coffee-scheduling when everyone goes to the same three or four places. You just bump into people organically. If you don’t bump into them, then they wouldn’t have had time to visit anyway. I like it.”
Beasley is returning to poetry in a new project she plans to start during her stay here in Oxford.
“Change of scenery is a critical part of starting a new work,” she said. “Picking up and moving is kind of really getting serious on a new project. I think for any poet, their motif and their images are often drawn from their surroundings, and it’s really kind of fun to be in a different space and looking for that.”
