Archive Festival set to light up literature

The Archive Literary Festival, the student-run series formerly known as the Blackburn Literary Festival, kicks off its 47th year Tuesday with a reading from the award-winning poet Mark Doty. It may have a new name but the purpose is still the same.

Doty first came to notice in 1993 with My Alexandria, a selection of poetry that chronicled Doty's personal experiences with the AIDS epidemic, a disease to which he lost his partner of 12 years in 1994. "I think it will always be part of my work in that it changed my life very dramatically," Doty said of this period of his life. "Life now seems more fragile and tentative."

Since then, Doty has penned three memoirs and a host of poems, both dealing with and departing from his earlier work. Yet critics continue to classify him based on his sexuality. "Some people think of me as an 'AIDs poet,' some as a 'gay poet,' and I'm happy to be [both]," Doty said. "But I want to be something other than that too. Poetry is larger than just the subject matter."

Tuesday's reading will be specifically "concerned with love, time, desire and change-the things that poets are always concerned with," he said. Topics range from AIDS to Arden, his aging golden retriever. Of particular notice will be selections from Doty's most recent volume, the critically acclaimed School of the Arts. The title of the book comes from the name of a school housed in a "big old barn" located down the street from Doty's former residence in Providencetown, Mass. But, like most poetry, its meaning is not that simple. "I want the title to have several layers of meaning," Doty said. "One is how art teaches us how to be human, how we're changed by the experience of living. the idea of schooling and being schooled."

The idea of schooling must be particularly important for Doty, who moonlights as a professor at the University of Houston. This semester Doty is teaching a graduate creative writing seminar. "We live in a culture that's very stratified in terms of age," Doty said. He continues to forge these relationships with the younger generation. "I've met people who have become irreplaceable to me through teaching."

It's this same connection that keeps Doty traveling around the country and world. "Writing is something you do yourself," he said. "It's a solitary exchange and I don't want to live like that all the time. I like making contact with audiences."

Establishing that degree of contact-between the writer and the average Duke student-is exactly what the Archive Literary Festival was intended to do. "The festival is meant to cultivate a love of literature and one way to do that is to expose students to masters of the literary arts," said Festival Chair Margo Hoyler, a sophomore. To that end, writers will now participate not only in a reading but also a master class. "This year we really tried to increase the interaction between students and the literary writers."

Mark Doty will be reading selections from his poetry Tuesday, February 21 at 8 p.m. in the East Duke Parlors. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. His master class will be held Wedneday, Feb. 22 at 10 a.m. in the Allen Building. Limited space is still available. The festival will continue Mar. 31 with an appearance by Joe Ashby Porter and conclude Apr. 13 with a reading by Ann Beattie. For more information visit the Archive Literary Festival website at http://www.duke.edu/web/litfest.