"Every poem is a love poem"

By Cindy Landrum  

JANUARY 20, 2012 9:31 a.m. (0)

Travis Blankenship dabbled in all types of art before he became serious about poetry when he was 21.

“Poetry is the most natural expression of emotion I’ve been able to accomplish,” said Blankenship, who arrived in Spartanburg last month to complete a residency that ends in May.

This is the sixth year of Hub-Bub’s artist-in-residence program and Blankenship is the first artist to join in the middle of one of the 11-month residencies. Blankenship was a finalist for the AiR program this year and took the vacancy created when another artist left to take a job on the West Coast.

The program is designed to attract fresh, creative artists to Spartanburg. Artists are brought in to “live free and create.”

In addition to getting free rent in the third-floor loft studio apartments in what was an old Nash Rambler car dealership on South Daniel Morgan Avenue and time to create their own art, the artists-in-residence are required to perform 20 hours a week of community service.

Blankenship, who up until last month taught English composition for the Kentucky Community and Technical College system, will coordinate the Upstate’s Poetry Out Loud competition. Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation contest for high school students.

Eight students from Upstate high schools will compete in the regional competition at The Showroom on Saturday from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.

Blankenship, who founded the Goldenrod Poetry Festival and was a part of the Green House Poetry Slam team, said Poetry Out Loud is an opportunity to educate students, teachers and parents about the art form.

“It makes poetry look as important as it really is,” he said. “Poetry definitely doesn’t get as much attention as it should in the United States.”

Blankenship received his bachelor degree in English from Western Kentucky University and his masters of fine arts in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Mississippi.

“It is possible every poem is a love poem,” he said. “Yes, there’s romantic love but then I think another way to make every poem a love poem is being in love with my subject.”

Blankenship is known for writing in the experimental form. In some of his poetry, stanzas can be rearranged to sound like different characters are talking.

“It’s like a circle on a page,” he said.

Blankenship described himself as an “ol’ Kentucky boy,” something to which he’d be true to even in his poetry.

A college professor suggested he apply to the Hub-Bub program.

“In my research about Spartanburg, I sort of fell in love with the city,” he said. “And it’s even better than I thought. People here have been most welcoming. The culture here infects everybody.”

And Blankenship said he could not have received a better welcome than to see the Christmas tree on the Denny’s headquarters building.

“I couldn’t bring my Christmas tree so when I looked out my window, it was like Denny’s provided one, the biggest one I’ve ever seen,” he said.

In addition to his community service work, Blankenship will work on a poetry manuscript about pig farmers.

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