Writers worldwide find
freedom at Iowa

This is what the International Writing Program is all about: creating a global community by fostering individual connections.

In 1971 Tomaz Salamun, a young poet from the Balkans, was invited to attend the program. Salamun had been jailed in his native Slovenia because of his poetry and editorship of a controversial literary journal. But in the United States, he felt something unlock inside him.

"In America, images flew toward me," he said.

He wrote copiously while attending the program, staying in Iowa City for a year after his tenure ended. Writing. Talking to other writers. And, perhaps most importantly, meeting people who could translate his poems.

"This is an artist who had been unemployed and discouraged," says Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program (IWP). "Then he came here and his work began to ripple out. He comes from a country in which there are only two million people. Now, he is considered a world-class poet whose influence on young poets around the world is dramatic. That’s due in large part to the International Writing Program."

Salamun returned to The University of Iowa in 1988 as a visiting writer, then again on April 20, 2001, for a reading with Ales Debeljak, a good friend and one of Slovenia’s–and the international literary community’s–newest rising poets.

Salamun’s emergence onto the world stage is a story typical of the IWP. The program was founded in 1967 by Iowa poet Paul Engle and his wife, the Chinese novelist Hualing Nieh Engle. It was conceived as a literary community that crossed the borders of geography, language, and culture. By the mid-70s, the IWP was established as a safe haven for writers, a place where "writers at-risk," whose opinions and words were subject to censorship in their homelands, found sanctuary.

Merrill came to The University of Iowa in August 2000 from the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where he held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters. He was charged with carrying on the Engles’ original mandate for the program–to provide and cultivate a world laboratory for literary minds.

But the connections go far deeper than that. Long before he came to the University to direct the IWP, Merrill himself had edited an anthology of Salamun’s poetry and translated two books of Debeljak’s work. His professional relationship with Debeljak became a personal one. Merrill traveled to Slovenia in 1992, intending to hike through the northern mountains of the region with his friend. He arrived just in time for the onset of the Third Balkan War.

Over the next four years, Merrill made nine more trips to every province in the former Yugoslavia, covering the war for publications ranging from The Nation to Sports Illustrated. In 1999, Merrill published Only The Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, a nonfictional narrative about his journeys. The title comes from a poem about war and survival written by Salamun. Merrill had witnessed oppression, and his decision to come to Iowa was based in his belief that writers from every culture must be given their voices.

"It struck me that this program, which is completely unique, must continue to do these enormously important things for literature," Merrill says. "My job, as I see it, is to set up conditions so writers from all over the globe can create new works, interact with the community, learn from and teach one another, and go home with a richer understanding of the United States and other countries. This is the reason that Iowa, in the public imagination, equals writing."

By all accounts, Merrill’s first year of leadership has been a great success.

Peter Nazareth, professor of English and African-American world studies and a former IWP participant, has been an adviser to the program for more than 20 years.

"Chris is a great writer and a good-hearted person who appreciates and celebrates the achievements of others," Nazareth says. "He is just the right person–not only to carry on the tradition of the International Writing Program, but also to take it to the next stage."

Indeed, Merrill has. He is a director who understands the inherent assets of the program and knows to take advantage of opportunities. He puts writers together in a variety of combinations and different venues, gives them time and space and topics for discussion. Then he sits back to watch great things happen.

In fall 2000, the program welcomed 18 new writers from 15 nations, including Argentina, Ireland, Russia, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam, and Nigeria. By chance, there was an unusually high number of playwrights among them, so Merrill organized a panel discussion on campus, "Playwriting and the Dialogue Between Language and Action," in mid-September.

"Three playwrights–Mike Finn from Ireland, Motti Lerner from Israel, and H. S. Shiva Prakash from India," Merrill recalls. "They began talking about language and action on stage and what came out was their radically different concepts of drama. Each defended his position eloquently and came away with a renewed appreciation for the many possibilities available to a writer."

Based largely upon the vitality of the playwrights’ panel, and on the IWP’s mission to strengthen ties with other departments at the University, Merrill followed with a dramatic reading at the Seacrest 1883 Octagonal Barn in October 2000, where faculty from the University’s theatre arts department read sections of the plays written by IWP participants.

So popular was the reading of Finn’s Pigtown, a mosaic-style dramatic narrative about life in Limerick, that Merrill invited Finn to stay on as the International Programs’ writer-in-residence for the spring semester. Finn spent his time in Iowa City working in area schools, community festivals, and senior citizen centers, and working on a new play about immigrants coming through Ellis Island, which was inspired by his experiences in the United States and at the IWP.

"There’s no other place in the world where I could have met writers from all parts of the world," Finn says. "We learned about one another’s histories and insights and perspectives. One thing I discovered was how lucky I am to live in a country where I can write pretty much anything I like."

The IWP remains dedicated to providing the forum where writers from all over the world can write their truths. Toward that end, the program has launched a major fund-raising effort, together with The University of Iowa Foundation, to endow the directorship, freeing funds to support full fellowships for writers from censorious countries. The first such fellowship was created when Cedar Rapids resident William Quarton announced plans to permanently fund a $12,500 IWP fellowship to bring one promising writer to Iowa City each year. The first recipient of the Quarton fellowship is Cuban writer Norge Esposito, who will attend the IWP in fall 2001.

"My mission is to engender the sort of support that will keep the International Writing Program going forever," Merrill says. "One of Salamun’s poems begins ‘I was born in a wheatfield, snapping my fingers.’ That alone has set fire to many young poets and given them new ways to think about what a poem might be. One young writer came to our country through the IWP, fell in love, had his work translated. And soon there were poets in wheatfields all over the world, snapping their fingers."