Bright life in the U.S. inspires Amherst poet

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KEVIN GUTTING

Henk Rossouw's "Chez Times Square," was a winner in a recent poetry contest sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. He is a student in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at UMass

Like most of the winners of the recent Bright Lights Big Verse contest, in which poets from across the country were invited to extol the virtues of Times Square, Amherst poet Henk Rossouw's relationship with the iconic stretch of New York City real estate is merely a passing one.

Of the four top finishers (out of a field of 500 entries), only one lives in New York. The others, like Rossouw, are occasional passersby.

But, that doesn't mean Rossouw, a student in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, didn't have plenty to say.

"I've had a love affair with New York for a long time," said Rossouw, a South African native who first visited Times Square back in 2003. "I found it overwhelming. It's so bright - to the point where you almost need sun glasses at night. ... That's part of its charm."

Originally from Cape Town, Rossouw, 31, is in his last year as a student in the three-year UMass program for writers. He first read about the Times Square contest on a Poetry Society of American calendar that was posted on the refrigerator of one of his UMass professors and, on a whim, decided to enter.

Henk Rossouw reads 'Chez Times Square'

Poetic possibilities

Although he had long written fiction, was a journalism major in college in his native country and worked for five years as a stringer for Newsweek and a writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Rossouw eventually decided to devote his career to poetry - something he has enjoyed since he was a high schooler in Cape Town. He wrote his first poem back then, as a 16-year-old because, he says, it seemed a romantic thing to do.

"My best friend was in love with somebody older and they used to write poetry to each other," Rossouw recalled. "Something about that triggered me: 'Oh, I want to do that too. I want to be part of this mysterious thing.' So I started writing poems too."

Those high school years (1990-'94), he says, were a time of violent upheaval in South Africa.

"I began high school around when [Nelson] Mandala came out of prison. It was an interesting time to come of age - being a member of that 'transition generation,' having witnessed the old and being part of the new as well." It was during that time that Mandala, who would later become President of South Africa, helped bring an end to apartheid.

But, Rossouw does not belabor the point.

"There are no references in my poetry to South Africa or apartheid or history or the past," Rossouw said. "I don't think that is ignoring anything. It's just paying attention to what's going on right now for me. Being very happy here is what inspires my poetry. Living in the Valley - nothing violent happens here. Being here, I really appreciate peace and really understand it and seek it out."

"Chez Times Square," Rossouw's award-winning poem about that expanse between 42nd and 47th streets that was once synonymous with sleaze but has since come up in the world, reflects the happiness and excitement Rossouw says he has felt on his few visits there.

"The poem says 'desire and excitement,' " Rossouw said. "It's a kind of sexy poem, although it's not an erotic poem. That sexy feeling of being in the middle of the city where things are always going on. A desire for movement and change and possibility and then excitement."

Fleet of pen

It only took Rossouw an hour or so to write the poem.

"I think what I'm really into is speed. I could write a poem in a day, write a poem in an hour. I think some of my best poems have been written quickly," he said. "The fun ones, the great poems, just come."

Each winner of the second annual Times Square contest that was co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and the Times Square Alliance, received $750 and a trip to New York City, where they read their poems aloud on Sept. 29 - in Times Square, of course.

"A good thing about the reading is that nothing stopped. Time continued. The traffic was going on. The people were still milling around in the background," Rossouw said. "There was a nice sense of openness. It gives some sense that poetry's open. That it is accessible. That it is something that can happen in the middle of Times Square and that people passing by can listen and feel excited by it."

Beyond that, he says, the experience exposed him to some very exciting, well-established poets, all members of the poetry society.

"They [the Poetry Society] support poetry in so many different ways. Many of their members are really great American poets so if you get an award, it's recognition from people in that wider community ... it's exposure. Especially for someone like me - I haven't had a book out yet."

He expects that, if and when that recognition - and that book - come, it will be in large part thanks to the UMass program, which he says has helped to hone his skills, while exposing him to inspiring poets and teachers.

"The program's strength is its really great students and really great faculty," he said. "To come out as a poet, it's more risky than fiction, which is more conventional. That milieu creates a kind of permission, a space, where I was like, 'OK, I don't have to hide this.' "

Although he is scheduled to complete the UMass program in the spring, Rossouw, who is in the United States on a student visa, says he's in no hurry to leave the place that has served as both an artistic and a geographic haven.

"My artistic career and destiny are very much tied up with my making a life here," he said. "I may have the sentimentality of someone's who's fresh off the boat, but being in this country is really important to me as an artist."

Kathleen Mellen can be reached at kmellen@gazettenet.com.