Jack Collom
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John Aldridge "Jack" Collom (November 8, 1931 – July 2, 2017) was an
American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q * George Quasha (born 1942) R S T U–V ...
, essayist, and creative writing
pedagogue Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken a ...
. Included among the twenty-five books he published during his lifetime were ''Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955–2000''; ''Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community''; and ''Second Nature'', which won the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. In the fields of education and creative writing, he was involved in eco-literature, ecopoetics, and writing instruction for children.


Life and work

Jack Collom was born John Aldridge Collom in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
on November 8, 1931. He and his sister Jane Wodening grew up in the small town of Western Springs, Illinois, spent much of his time
birdwatching Birdwatching, or birding, is the observing of birds, either as a recreational activity or as a form of citizen science. A birdwatcher may observe by using their naked eye, by using a visual enhancement device like binoculars or a telescope, by ...
, and over the years became an inveterate bird-watcher. Collom moved to
Fraser, Colorado The Town of Fraser is a Statutory Town located in Grand County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 1,400 at the 2020 United States Census, a +14.38% increase since the 2010 United States Census. The town is situated in Middle Par ...
in 1947. He studied forestry at Colorado A&M College where he earned a B.S. in 1952. Afterwards, he spent four years in the
U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
and he started writing poetry in 1955 while stationed in Tripoli, Libya. His unit was next stationed at
Neubiberg Neubiberg is a municipality and a village in south-east of Munich, Germany, founded in 1912. It used to have an airport that was used as a Luftwaffe-base in the Third Reich and after the war as a U.S. airbase and in the following years as the Germa ...
, a base just south of
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
in
Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
. It is there he met his first wife (a native German) in 1956. Jack moved back to the US after his discharge from the military but soon returned to Germany for a brief time to get married. They naturalized back to America in 1959 where he worked in factories for twenty years while writing poetry. Jack received his B.A. in English (1972) and M.A. in English literature (1974) from the
University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University o ...
where he had studied on the
G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
. In 1974, he began teaching in the "Poetry-in-the-Schools" programs in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. In 1980, he began teaching poetry in the public schools of New York City, by way of the "Poets In Public Service" and "Teachers & Writers" programs. Collom continued to teach creative writing to children for the next 35 years in both elementary and secondary schools, where he developed a pedagogy for this type of educational approach. Subsequently,
Teachers & Writers Collaborative Teachers & Writers Collaborative is a New York City-based organization that sends writers and other artists into schools. It was founded in 1967 by a group of writers and educators, including Herbert Kohl (the group's founding director), June Jo ...
published three books of Collom's essays and commentary on this experience (which included the young students' poems), notably ''Poetry Everywhere'' and ''Moving Windows''. From 1966 to 1977, he published the work of many writers in a
little magazine In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, ...
called "The". He was twice awarded Poetry Fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
and received a
Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...
Grants to Artists award (2012). From 1986 until his death in 2017, Collom taught at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics as an adjunct professor where he shaped Writing Outreach, a community creative-writing project, into a course. In 1989 he pioneered Eco-Lit, one of the first ecology literature courses ever offered in the United States. Some of his accomplishments as an environmentalist-poet are documented in ''American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present''. His
nature writing Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...
s and essays about the environment were published in various venues, including ''ecopoetics'', ''The Alphabet of Trees: A Guide to Writing Nature Poetry'', and ''ISLE'', the journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment. He read and taught throughout the United States, in Mexico, Costa Rica, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. In 2008, he was the plenary speaker at the "Poetic Ecologies" conference at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2009, he led a three-week Creativity and Aging Program at Woodland Pattern in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
. He worked with numerous dancers, visual artists and musician/composers, and recorded three CDs: ''Calluses of Poetry'' and ''Colors Born of Shadow'', with Ken Bernstein, and ''Blue Yodel Blue Heron'', with Dan Hankin and Sierra Collom. In 2001, his adopted hometown of Boulder, Colorado, declared and celebrated a "Jack Collom Day".


Personal life

Collom was married three times. He had three sons by his first marriage. He had a daughter through a second marriage. Jack Collom died in Boulder, Colorado on July 2, 2017.KGNU News (July 3, 2017)


Selected publications

;Poetry * ''Arguing with Something Plato Said''. (Rocky Ledge Editions, 1990) * ''The Task''. (Baksun Books, 1996) * ''Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955–2000''. (Tuumba Press, 2001) * ''Exchanges of Earth and Sky''. (Fish Drum Press, 2006) * ''Situations, Sings'' (with
Lyn Hejinian Lyn Hejinian (born May 17, 1941) is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is known for her landmark work ''My Life'' (Sun & Moon, 1987, original version Burning Deck, 1980), a ...
). (Adventures in Poetry, 2007) * ''Second Nature''. (Boulder, Co: Instance Press, 2012) ;Nonfiction * ''Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community'' (with
Sheryl Noethe Sheryl Noethe is an American poet and served as Montana's poet laureate from 2011 to 2013. Biography Born in Minnesota "into a family that didn't read books", Noethe discovered writing through a collection of Dorothy Parker's short stories and r ...
). (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1994; 2nd edition, 2007) * (contributor) ''Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments,'' (ed. Ron Padgett). (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1995; 2nd edition, 2007) * (editor) ''A Slow Flash of Light: An Anthology of Poems about Poetry''. (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2008) * ''Moving Windows: Evaluating the Poetry Children Write''. (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2000) * (contributor) ''The &NOW Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing'' (Illinois), 2013


References


External links

*
On Sound and Rhythm: A Way to Start Teaching Poetry to Children and Young Adults
– an excerpt from ''Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community.''
Learning the Chant Poem
an excerpt from ''Old Faithful: 18 Writers Present Their Favorite Writing Assignments.''
The Sub-Limbo Stump-Toed Shrike & Other Dream Birds
is bart plantenga's video-homage to the spirit, poetics, ornithological and yodeling energy of Jack Collom, a unique poet to say the least. {{DEFAULTSORT:Collom, Jack 1931 births 2017 deaths University of Colorado alumni Naropa University faculty 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets American nature writers American conservationists American male poets American naturalists American ornithologists Environmental writers Nature writers Writers from Chicago Poets from Colorado 20th-century American male writers 21st-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Writers from Colorado