Grady Chambers spent three years working desk jobs in Chicago. He researched state budgets, made countless phone calls and filled out form after form of paperwork.

He felt ridiculous.

“If you had told me when I was a junior in college that that was going to be my first job out of college, I would have said I hit the lottery,” said Chambers, now a third-year graduate student in Syracuse University’s MFA program in creative writing. “But I guess it was just the reality of the work, and the daily grind of it, turned out to be not all what I was hoping for.”

In 2012, Chambers applied to SU’s creative writing master’s program, which will kick off National Poetry Month on Wednesday by hosting acclaimed poet Ron Padgett. The program accepts only 12 students each year — six for poetry and six for fiction writing.

The program is consistently ranked in the Top 10 in the country by LitBridge.com, a website that ranks MFA programs across the country. Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times best sellers and Guggenheim fellows have all taught and graduated from the program. With acclaimed alumni like Shirley Jackson and George Saunders, many say the program’s reputation is unparalleled. Both students and professors credit its success to its small size, as well as its tight-knit and collaborative community.

“It was a no-brainier to come here, because of the faculty, because of the program’s history — some of my favorite writers taught here or went through the program,” Chambers said. “Raymond Carver taught here, Tobias Wolff taught here. The program’s history is unbelievable.”

Every professor in the program is award-winning, published and a working artist. Christopher Kennedy, Arthur Flowers and Mary Karr are a few of the accomplished writers that make up the current faculty list.

Sarah Harwell, a professor and graduate of the program, credits everything she is as an artist to the faculty and the students.

“For me, they have been incredibly supportive, very kind. I think the professors have an investment in helping you make it out in the world that doesn’t really end when you leave here,” said Harwell, who is also the associate director of the MFA program.

All students enrolled in the program are fully funded. Each one receives a full tuition scholarship in addition to an annual stipend of $13,040–17,220, according to the department’s website. This is something only a handful of MFA programs in the country do. Harwell said this allows the students to focus on their writing, and avoid having to worry about juggling two jobs on the side to afford to go to school.

Harwell said the program does not focus on the “professionalization” of writing — there are no classes on publishing or creating “marketable” work. She added that students will struggle with that side of the artistic world for the rest of their lives and that the time they spend at SU should be rooted in developing their work.

Despite not focusing on publishing while students are in the program, Harwell said, the professors have a strong commitment to their students post-graduation. After she graduated in 2005, Harwell began to send her poetry manuscript out to different publishers, but no one would take it.

“I wasn’t having any luck, so finally Chris Kennedy (director of the MFA program), — he and his wife — asked me for my manuscript,” Harwell said. “They reordered it in the way that they thought worked, and the second time I sent it out, it got taken.”

She said the world of publishing, especially in poetry, is mostly rejection. However, both graduates and current students have had recent success.

In January, first-year graduate student Wendy Chen was named one of “10 Young American Poets Changing the Face of Poetry” by The Culture Trip, a website for culture, arts and travel.

This comes shortly after Chen won the Academy of American Poets’ first Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award for her poem “They Sail Across the Mirrored Sea.”

“Everybody is incredibly supportive, we hang out outside of classes too, and I think that really helps the workshop environment,” Chen said. “It feels very supportive, being that we are all friends outside of class as well.”

Graduates of the program have also seen success. In 2001, Stephen Dunn won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book, “Different Hours.”

“I told my wife and some friends. It is always a little tricky to tell your friends who are poets, because as happy as they might be for you, there’s a bit of jealousy there,” said Dunn, who graduated from the program in 1970. “I think it was a nice mixture of happiness and jealousy that I received from people.”

Dunn has published more than 15 collections in his career and has received many awards for his work.

“When I was a student there I was just terrified and I didn’t know anything, really,” said Dunn, who studied under Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Justice. “I went when I was 30, and I had been a history major, I had gone through college on a basketball scholarship, so I was strangely ill-prepared. Though I had some ability, I think; I had some facility with language.”

Pulitzer finalist and current professor Bruce Smith said SU’s program is special because of its incredibly passionate faculty and students.

He said despite being on the periphery of society, poetry holds an important place in our culture. People turn to poetry at the happiest and saddest moments of their lives — they read at weddings and at funerals because they need something, Smith added.

“It should have died out. No one buys poems, no one listens to it unless it’s April in Poetry Month, same for the novels,” Smith said. “They say poetry is dead, and yet it endures. People come here for three years, live in Syracuse and get poor and write poems.”

Published on April 1, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Jacob: jagedets@syr.edu