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In print | Published September 8, 2011

“Every book of poems tells a story,” said Nathalie Anderson, Professor of the English Department, at the start of the launch event for her newest poetry collection, “Quiver.” “Quiver” is a 94-page volume written by Professor Anderson while on sabbatical. “[The collection] is about loss, consolation, and the possibility of transcendence,” Anderson said.

“Quiver” features a variety of works, ranging from dramatic, eloquent verses about the rocky shorelines of Ireland, to sublime and sensual poems about the delicacy of the human mind or the relationship to a lover.

Many of her compositions elicited roaring laughter from the audience as she demonstrated her ability to make commonplace topics unique and engaging. Experiences of “airport hell,” the associative powers of the human mind and the irritating woman in the row behind you who sings along during a concert were all touched upon.

In contrast, a quartet of poems based on Anderson’s experiences in Ireland, with breathtaking energy and magnificent language, generated tears in the eyes of listeners. “The Vortex,” a poem about a sailing disaster, was particularly moving in its personification of the sea and passionate appeals for remembrance of the lives lost.

Fellow English professor Betsy Bolton, who gave the introductory speech at the event on Monday, illuminated some of Anderson’s signature styles and themes. “What I love most are the textures,” Bolton said. “Words buzzing at the lip — triggered, happy, skittish, ready to fly.”

Professor Bolton is one of the members of the English Department with whom Anderson shares her work most frequently. The Department functions, in a sense, as a community of writers. “All of us [in the Department] have shared our work with everyone else at some point,” Anderson said in a separate interview.

Students, too, receive the benefits of the Department’s attention to their own projects. Julia Finkelstein ’13, a student of Anderson’s, described how her professor helped her improve her work by guiding her along the process of composition in a poetry workshop.

“Professor Anderson showed us … that writing poetry requires devotion and extreme revision. It is always a pleasure to have Nathalie Anderson read your poetry because she can draw attention to the most effective sections and then give specific and meaningful suggestions for the sections that need revision.”

Anderson expounded on her own journey from aspirational poet to published, renowned wordsmith. “When I was in college, it was easy for me to drive things together; I could aim for a final line,” she said. She discovered, however, that such an approach was wrong for her.

“I started trying to not write quickly and not write neatly,” she reflects. “Now, poems sometimes spill over several days, several weeks, several months. Sometimes I’ll pick something up after a year and go back to it.”

In the classroom, Anderson “tr[ies] to influence students to be as much themselves on the page as possible, to let their own work flower.” She teaches several poetry classes, seminars and workshops at Swarthmore, but occasionally takes time off to work on her collections or travel in search of inspiration. (This semester, she is teaching the “Subverting Verses” First-Year Seminar, the Modern Poetry class, and the Lyric Encounters class.)

Interestingly, though, she notes that it is difficult to write about a place while there — it is only with distance that the words come most naturally.

Anderson’s career, though, is not limited to her professorship at Swarthmore and “Quiver.” Professor Bolton describes the extension of her talents to venues throughout Philadelphia as “a herd of Nats.”

Anderson is the librettist for seven musical compositions, among them three operas. She is the Poet in Residence for the Rosenbach Museum and Library and has authored two other collections of poems in addition to “Quiver” — “Following Fred Astaire” and “Crawlers.” In addition, she has completed a fourth poetry collection, entitled Stain, and has a year’s worth of unpublished poems that she is currently revising and stringing together.

“Nathalie Anderson is a wordsmith; she makes expected phrases unexpected and pays particular attention to sound in order to create swift and elegant poems,” Finkelstein said. She gives life to the inanimate and individuality to the commonplace. Her latest collection, “Quiver,” is nothing short of a success.

Quiver is available for purchase at the Swarthmore College Bookstore.

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