Poet Derick Burleson joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Rwanda to teach English at National University
Poems reflect journeys
ANNE HANLEY
ALASKA WRITERS
Published: May 15th, 2005
Last Modified: May 15th, 2005 at 06:29 AM
Derick Burleson is a poet of place. He doesn't write about a single place but everyplace he has ever lived. He was born in Oklahoma, the son of wheat farmers. After getting a bachelor's degree in journalism from Oklahoma State University, he worked as a reporter at newspapers in midsized cities in Oklahoma and Kansas. When a fireworks plant exploded near Manhattan, Kan., he discovered he didn't like documenting grief. He went back to school and got a master's from Kansas State.
In 1991, he joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Rwanda to teach English at National University. In 1993, with just three months left in his assignment, Burleson and other Peace Corps volunteers were evacuated. He left just a year before the civil war turned into genocide.
He taught English at the University of Missouri for a while, then got a master's from the University of Montana Missoula and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. He came to the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a visiting poet four years ago. For the past two years, he has been the director of composition.
"Poetry bears witness to my life and times and what I've experienced," Burleson says. He still thinks about his time in Rwanda and how, bad as the civil war was, he never saw the genocide coming. "There was tension and military checkpoints ..." His voice trails off. Most of the Rwandans he knew are dead now.
His book of poems from Rwanda, "Ejo," won the 2000 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press. Burleson says he often feels like an outsider, an exile caught between places. This poem from "Ejo" describes his feelings with a reporter's zeal for accuracy as he tries to re-acclimate to the United States after Rwanda.
Former Alaska writer laureate Anne Hanley lives in Fairbanks. This poem is reprinted from "Ejo" by Derick Burleson, published in 2000 by the University of Wisconsin Press, and used with the author's permission.
Home Again
By DERICK BURLESON
April Fool's and snow
the day we come back to ourselves
in the Safeway cereal aisle.
Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms,
we can't seem to choose among
all the air-conditioned colors
of boxes shelved under lights
designed to make them glow.
We've learned again how
to accelerate through rush-hour
traffic down Kansas City freeways,
crossing the Missouri each day
into the neighboring state.
Safe at home we eat fast food
each night and channel-surf
until sleep takes us on the sofa,
blue tides of TV light lapping our knees. Then one morning
we wake to our local newsman saying
President Habyarimana's plane
is still in flames on the runway,
and all the next month we watch
as our friends are murdered,
or murder.
