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Jeanie Thompson: Poet and Literary Advocate B Y P ATSY R OBERTSON P HOTOGRAPHY BY D ARREN F REEMAN I T ’ S AMUSING TO J EANIE T HOMPSON . T HE SHOCKED , BLANK LOOK THAT STRANGERS WEAR WHEN HEARING SHE ’ S A “POET!” am just an ordinary person who writes poetry,” she explains. “I’m like everyone else. I go to the grocery store. I do laundry. And I find that gar- dening is the most stress-relieving activity I have.” She’s being modest, of course. Jeanie is the ex- ecutive director of a dynamic, non-profit organization called the Alabama Writers’ Forum. She is also a poetry faculty member with the Spalding University MFA Writing Program (Louisville of KY). And she is a celebrated, published author in her own right. Her day-to-day schedule would leave mere mortals in the dust. Jeanie came to Montgomery when the Forum she founded in 1993 opened headquarters in the Capitol City. Its goals are to pro- mote writers, writing, publishing and teachers of creative writing in Alabama. In effecting those goals, Thompson partners with the State Council on the Arts, the Alabama Arts Alliance, universities, com- munity colleges, public schools, historical institutions and other adjacent groups to create awards and produce many kinds of liter- ary programs. Tracing her earlier years: Jeanie grew up in Decatur, Alabama, on the banks of the “deep and blue” Tennessee River. (From the state song, “Alabama.”) She remembers her first “paying job” as a page in the public li- brary in Decatur. “It was a treasure trove for me,” she said. “There was no end of things to discover — I didn’t realize I was soaking up the great writers of the day — Southern, American, and Interna- tional.” Thompson muses that those times “shaped who I am as a writer through shaping my curiosity and wonder.” “Art can save us from ourselves,” Jeanie believes. “I started writing at age fourteen.” She remembers, “It saved me from the pettiness of high school society. I look back now and realize I was severely bullied by gossip.” In the following years, college became a catalyst for Thompson. “Once I got into classes as an undergraduate at the University of Alabama, I started to understand a lot more about how to write 18 AL/ Metro 360 www.almetro360.com CULTURE............................................................................................................................................... and the importance of reading other poets, listening to wiser, older teachers, and starting to develop my voice.” In 1977, she received her MFA in creative writing from the Uni- versity of Alabama, where she became the founding editor of Black Warrior Review literary journal. To date, she has published five collections of poems, and three chapter books, and has co-edited a collection of memoirs by Ala- bama authors, “The Remember Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Writ- ers.” Among her books of poetry are: “How to Enter the River,” “White for Harvest,” “Witness,” and “The Seasons Bear Us.” Her latest, and a major work is “The Myth of Water, Poems from the Life of Helen Keller.” Jeanie’s extensive research helped her feel a resonance with Keller, “Especially that her spirituality reminded me of how I felt about poetry.” For Jeanie it’s the “musicality that is inherent in all water — lan- guage in general — poetry in particular” which draws her to writing. She explains she wants to “hear” the lines most of all. Interestingly, she and Keller grew up along the same Tennessee River flowing past their hometowns. Keller’s childhood years were spent at the family home, “Ivy Green,” in Tuscumbia, Alabama. While reading a biography of Keller, Jeanie learned the story of Helen’s thwarted engagement, a poignant drama that happened “I