{"id":3274,"date":"2014-11-04T20:03:38","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T01:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/17\/kendall-driscoll-16-becomes-published-poet\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T18:23:41","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T23:23:41","slug":"kendall-driscoll-16-becomes-published-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/kendall-driscoll-16-becomes-published-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"Kendall Driscoll \u201916 becomes published poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kendall Driscoll \u201916 thought writing her thoughts would keep them hidden safely away. What the soft-spoken music education\"The<\/a> major from Aiken, S.C., didn\u2019t count on was the words jumping off the page.<\/p>\n

Speech of the Masquerade<\/i>, Driscoll\u2019s first book, will be published Dec. 5 by PRA Publishing<\/a>. A collection of 31 poems, Speech of the Masquerade<\/i> represents the culmination of a talent that Driscoll simply couldn\u2019t keep secret despite a personality not exactly determined to find the limelight.<\/p>\n

Driscoll began writing poetry in elementary school, penning \u201chundreds\u201d of verses in notebooks only she ever saw. But one she wrote as a sophomore in high school, called \u201cSpeech of the Masquerade,\u201d made her especially proud\u2014and especially brave. In it, a protagonist \u201cwants to show the world that she\u2019s something more than that quiet little bookworm, but she\u2019s scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took more than a year, but Driscoll stopped being that scared bookworm when she entered \u201cSpeech of the Masquerade\u201d in the 2010 Poetry Matters<\/a> contest. To her surprise she won, and to her chagrin one of the requirements was that the poem be read aloud<\/a> to the judges and a group of her peers.<\/p>\n

But Driscoll \u201cblew the audience away,\u201d according to Lucinda Clark, founder of PRA as well as a co-founder of Poetry Matters. She also gained a confidence she didn\u2019t know she had.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat poem speaks so clearly for me because at the time I when wrote it in high school I was so scared to talk to anyone, and sharing poetry with anyone was a huge fear that I had,\u201d Driscoll said. \u201c\u2019Speech of the Masquerade gave me the voice to get my poetry out there, present my ideas, put my heart on the page. That\u2019s what it really made me do. It\u2019s my favorite poem, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Driscoll went on to win Poetry Matters contests twice more in three years, and during her freshman year at Furman she took Clark up on Clark\u2019s offer to try to produce a book. Her query letter was quickly met with a request for a completed manuscript.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t expect that it was going to be accepted, and then I realized, wow, I\u2019m going to have to balance poetry and music. It is a crazy juggling act, but it\u2019s an experience of a lifetime,\u201d Driscoll said.<\/p>\n

Working with PRA editor Melody Collins was a \u201cvery long process,\u201d Driscoll says, and she had to find a way to do it while also keeping up her grades in a tough major and playing the flute in the Furman Symphony Orchestra<\/a> and the Paladin Regiment<\/a>. Driscoll wishes she had the time to double major in English, but she has surprisingly taken only one English class at Furman\u2014Studies in the Essay, taught by Joni Tevis, Ph.D.<\/a><\/p>\n

Even then, she hoped to keep her writing life a secret. No such luck.<\/p>\n

\u201cI purposely didn\u2019t tell her when I got into the class that I was a writer; that I was going to be a published poet. I didn\u2019t want her to know,\u201d Driscoll said. \u201cTo my surprise, halfway through the term she heard from another student that I had a book coming out. She announced it to the class, and I was like \u2018oh my word, my secret\u2019s out!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tevis did more than spill the beans, however. The professor’s own book The Wet Collection<\/a> was published in 2007, and she was happy to mentor Driscoll through the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re amazing poems. They are very generous in the way that her narrator sees the world,\u201d Tevis says. \u201cThey are detailed, and there\u2019s kind of a wry sense of humor. The narrator is someone that you want to walk through the pages with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Driscoll says her musical background helps with her poetry, and vice-versa, and inspiration comes simply from waking up every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of poetry for me, it\u2019s all about the rhythm\u2014the rhythm of the words, how it sounds. That is the biggest element for me when I write my poetry, so music does play a large part,\u201d she said. \u201cLooking around at my surroundings, observing life, kind of getting into my own self and thinking \u2018how do I feel today? How do others feel? How are people reacting to something?\u2019 And it stirs up ideas and it makes words come out onto the page. I have to write. I can\u2019t imagine not writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Driscoll thinks her work has gotten \u201ca little bit darker\u201d in college as she has been exposed to more of the realities of life, with subjects like suicide, divorce, and dysfunctional families replacing youthful idealism. But the quality has hardly suffered. Poet J.C. Elkin<\/a> says the poems are \u201cangst-ridden and should be required reading for parents and teachers who may have forgotten how it feels to be a teen in turmoil,\u201d while DeVeata Williams, aka LadyVee DaPoet and author of Clenched Teeth Smiling<\/i>, raves they\u2019re a \u201cperfect blend of complex wordplay mixed with honest simplicity to paint mind pictures that are hard to shake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Driscoll still can\u2019t suppress a smile when talking about the compliments she\u2019s gotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that blows my mind the most is to see the reviews of my book. When you first submit, you think, oh, maybe some people will like what I have, but there are going to be some people who don\u2019t. So you really start doubting if you\u2019re good enough. You\u2019re so scared,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you get it back, and they have wonderful things to say. I\u2019m amazed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Driscoll never intended to be a professional writer, though, and success hasn\u2019t changed her plans to become a music teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to dedicate my life entirely to writing and just sitting at home and staring at a computer screen,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve learned already that it\u2019s maddening to sit in front of a blank screen going, \u2018I am going to write a poem. I am going to write a poem. I am going to write a poem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She will continue to write them when the mood hits, though, and Professor Tevis has some advice for readers reluctant to tackle the poetry genre.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are kind of afraid of poetry, and I think this book reminds us that we don\u2019t have to be. We all listen to music every day, and poems are music too. You\u2019re just reading them instead of listening to them on the radio,\u201d she said. \u201cI think Kendall\u2019s poems are a great place to start because she wants you to understand them. She\u2019s not trying to be opaque. She wants to lead you through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tevis will host a signing and reading party for Driscoll on Dec. 10 in the English department lounge, located in Furman Hall 101. Learn more about Driscoll here<\/a> and keep up with her latest work at her blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kendall Driscoll \u201916 believed writing her thoughts would keep them hidden safely away. What the soft-spoken music education major from Aiken didn\u2019t count on was the words jumping off the page.\u00a0Speech of the Masquerade<\/i>, Driscoll\u2019s first book, will be published Dec. 5 by\u00a0PRA Publishing<\/a>. The collection of 31 poems represents the culmination of a talent that Driscoll simply couldn\u2019t keep secret despite a personality not exactly determined to find the limelight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,28,31,39,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-education","category-english","category-music","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}