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The writing of English graduate Anthony Caleshu ’92 is finding a warm reception on the other side of the Atlantic, where he’s also inspiring students to conduct their own explorations of creative writing.
Caleshu’s first book of poetry, The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite (Cambridge UK: Salt Press), will be published and become available for purchase through Amazon.com in January 2004. Poems from the collection have appeared in various literary journals, such as American Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Ireland Review, and Poetry Review (London).
The latter publication nominated Caleshu for a Forward Prize, awarded for the best content in magazines of the United Kingdom. He recently had a short story published in The Dublin Review and is working on a collection of stories and a novel. His first play, In the Bedroom, was produced in 2003 and received a favorable review from the Irish Times.
“With a title like In the Bedroom, it isn’t surprising to discover that Anthony Caleshu’s play for Catastrophe theatre company concerns love, fidelity, and sex,” writes the Times. “But there’s nothing predictable about this perceptive look at the tangled relationships of four young men and women
“Caleshu is exploring the idea that the ‘most sincere act of love is to do bad things for good reasons.’ With such subject matter, there was a risk that the play could have yielded to the temptation to be sensationalistic and crude. But its treatment of the conflict between love and self-interest is presented with sophistication and humour.”
“This is Caleshu’s first play — and it’s a debut that blends skilful plotting with wit and insight,” the review continues. “Together, he and Paul Hayes direct a very interesting young cast, who all give strong performances. With memorable characters and sharp dialogue, In the Bedroom sets out to tell an interesting story well — and it achieves this aim admirably, delivering a refreshing and enjoyable production.”
Caleshu recently took on the position of lecturer in English and creative writing at University of Plymouth in southwest England. “It allows me to teach courses that engage literature both critically and creatively, which has always been my interest,” he says. He teaches an undergraduate English class and a graduate creative writing class.
Last spring, he finished his fifth year at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he began while working on his Ph.D. dissertation on contemporary poet James Tate. His wife, Ciara, is from Galway, which is what brought him there.
“Teaching in both Ireland and the United Kingdom has given me a different vantage point from which to view American poetry, my primary research field,” says Caleshu. “Generally, the students haven’t been brought up with it the way Americans naturally are, so it requires reconsidering certain ‘givens’ such as context. Also, teaching here has enlarged my field of reading, introducing me to poets, for example, that extend to other (than U.S.) traditions.”
Caleshu says he’s been writing ever since taking a course with Lee Upton, professor and associate head of English and writer-in-residence at Lafayette, who introduced him to the idea of creative writing as a process that works toward a product.
“Engaging writing as a process has become something of a life-long project; the thing I enjoy most about it is that I’m constantly working toward some unattainable idea of what writing is and means. The greatest challenge is trying to write progressively; I’m not interested in writing another poet’s poetry, but in extending traditions (and language) in new ways.”
Sources for material are endless, he notes. They may be subject based, such as his wife, a painting, and a day-to-day experience, or language-based — an odd expression read in a newspaper, a song lyric, another poem.
“Without Lafayette, I wouldn’t be a writer or a teacher,” says Caleshu. “I started Lafayette pre-med, but soon become enthusiastic about literature because of great teachers like Lee Upton. Lee has been a tremendous influence; much of my career so far has been trying to combine teaching, scholarship, and writing in the way Lee has so successfully. At times, it can, of course, be hard to maintain certain ambitions, and Lee’s support both while I was at Lafayette and since I’ve graduated from Lafayette has been one of the factors that keeps me going.”
Four poems by Caleshu:
Migration Patterns
after The Collector
I am trying to make sense of this butterfly’s flight.
After a night’s driving, I am no closer than this small town that skirts my questions.
The townspeople keep dodging me with their shopping carts.
In this jam jar you can see I picked the cotton boll from a field near the airport.
I found the swallowtail drying his wings on a pasture’s picket fence.
What we need now goes something like this:
The application of aloe on a sunburn, though not so physical.
I understand it is late, but I’ll share with you everything I’ve gathered so far.
*(Originally published in Poetry Review)
Study: Sunday Morning after Their First Saturday Night
He could’ve been distant. And she could’ve been a pear.
Solemn and still in shadows of blue, her pouting lips
Drawn and spread, charcoal full lines in his sketchbook.
But this would’ve been obscene.
A Day at the Beach
The beach was emptying like an hourglass.
I saw an ex-lover who reminded me of an ex-lover.
It was late in the day and still her suit had not dried.
She pulled her shorts on over her wet suit.
Perhaps it was the way she bent that made me think of my ex-lover’s body?
She once rolled herself around a beach ball, which was a kinky as we got.
Her friend said, Just put a towel down under your suit. Don’t worry about the interior.
My current lover’s feet were deep in the sand: coarse and grey.
I imagined how her beige shorts would stain when she sat in her wet suit.
Our table was way out on the pier, she said to her friend as she passed us.
The tide rolled in and a seagull squawked.
Like this? her friend asked her.
No, nothing like that, she said smiling.
I returned the smile and returned myself to burying my current lover in the sand.
Before the sun went down, she kissed me goodbye, letting me be the last one to leave.
(Originally published in Poetry Review)
After the Word Love Was Spoken
as a dove is spoken of, or the Bible
from the mouth of a zealot — after the bedroom
windows were lowered
and the candles were blown out
leaving us to flush
into the pale of the other’s skin,
I tried to recollect myself, to recall
the stupidity of a brother, his abiding
love for an ex-girlfriend,
the lost job, the wasted life,
that Love is the word
for something that’s fleeting, for flight,
but I couldn’t. And when we
were drifting to sleep, rather
you were drifting to sleep,
I stayed awake with one eye open,
one eye on how my critical pallor
must have been what
attracted you to me in the first place,
that made me worth
trying. Now that I was erased and beaming
at the back of your neck —
like the moon in an awkward simile —
how to wake up
sharp as red dice, as a gamble,
in the loose freckles of your arms?
(Originally published in The Cuirt Journal)