PC student published in Poetry magazine

May 22, 2009

A student at Presbyterian College had his work published earlier this year in a national magazine.

Allen Butt, who just completed his freshman year at PC, had two poems – “Feather in Bas Relief” and “La Petit Vie” – printed in Poetry magazine.

A resident of Beaufort, S.C., Butt is a graduate of the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts, where he wrote one of the published poems as his high school thesis. He said he enjoys exploring the artificial nature of “art-making” in his work, as well as taking an interest in the space “where artifice and experience can overlap.”

Butt said he tries to create poetry as a “total body experience” whereby words “live on the page.”

“Having a poem on the page has a certain value,” he said. “But I like the discoveries that come in the relationships between sounds as opposed to meaning.”

An English major at PC, Butt said he understands the challenges ahead for young writers trying to break into the rarefied air breathed by professional poets. On the other hand, getting two poems published by the first magazine to publish T.S. Eliot is a great start.

“Being paid for my poems didn’t hurt my feelings,” he said. “That was handy.”  

posted by Hal Milam
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