Capen Hall's Special Collections Library hummed with literary talent on Monday as NAME, the Undergraduate Literary Magazine of the University at Buffalo, proudly launched its 72-page issue for this semester.
The Spring 2011 distribution of the magazine marked its second year of success in publication after a several year hiatus following its creation by Jessica Smith and others in 1998.
With a team of 23 powerful writers, nine editors, and support from various professors and members of the English department, NAME is a collection of pages stained with the stunning imaginations of creative undergraduates. Most writers are English majors, ranging in year from sophomore to senior. The magazine satisfies any literary taste as it mixes the elements of sound poetry, untraditional stanza structures, imagery, and short stories.
Matt Allison, a senior English major and a NAME editor, began the afternoon event by thanking all who contributed to the magazine, celebrating their talent and hard work. Though the gathering marked the initial distribution of this year's NAME, Allison stressed the acknowledgment of those who collaborated in its publication, highlighting its literary creativity.
Following Allison's opening was a troop of 14 of the 23 authors who read aloud their selected works to an audience of friends, family, faculty, and peers.
Kayla Rizzo, a junior English and environmental science major, started the lineup of artists with the performance of her piece titled A Series of Discrete Offerings, concluding the afternoon readings with Michael Koh, a senior English major, reading If My Mother Walked Around In Hi-tops I Would Be Really Jealous Because She Never Let Me Buy One Before.
Each performance was unique and inspiring while displaying the impressive talent UB students possess. Robert Clark, a senior English major, read aloud Surrealist Play, a flavorful aesthetic dialogue between the numbers Six, Seven, Eight, and Twelve. Following Clark was a performance by Ruth Dosch, a junior English and linguistics major, who submitted a visual image of a Celtic knot with her poem twisted within the space of the knot.
"[NAME] is a collective thing, open minded to different types of writing," Allison said.
Not only are the poems conceptually pleasing but they are also visually provocative, some mocking the look of spilled words across a page. Pieces such as No Reply by Peter Leston Williams, a senior psychology and interdisciplinary studies major and a NAME editor, and Where Do Echoes Begin? by Patrick Riedy, a junior English major and a NAME editor, use this technique of organized chaos, adding another layer of interpretation to their work.
While the publication invites all arrangements of literature, it encourages and supports the growth of undergraduate creative writing.
"It's nice that there's an outlet that fosters creative voice for undergraduates," said Michael Chung, a senior English major and a NAME editor.
Though this year's publication has significantly grown from last year's issue, new writers are encouraged to contribute.
Xicong Chen, a sophomore pharmacology and toxicology major and a NAME editor, also advocates for more students to participate in the collaboration of the magazine.
"It'd be nice if more people submitted to NAME," Chen said.
The already increased interest from writers for NAME is an optimistic tone that compliments Buffalo's rich literary past. The Queen City's lost love of poetic language seems to be taking an innovative step forward as more students find more interest in UB's own publication.
"[The launching of NAME] is another event to show the resurgence of the creative writing community in the English department, which is nice to see," Riedy said.
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