The People's Poet
“It brings community together—a common ground, you might say,” says poet-about-town Harris Gardner, LA’69, reflecting on the unifying power of verse.
Gardner expresses his enthusiasm for his craft by writing prolifically—a collection of his poems, Among Us, was published last year. He also hosts regular poetry events around the Greater Boston area.
He recalls being introduced to poetry at age fifteen by his tenth-grade teacher: “She gave us an assignment to write a poem. And I said, ‘This is fine; I’ll try another one.’ Just because I wanted to, not because anyone told me I had to.”
To share the vitality he’s found in poetry, Gardner, who lives in Boston, organizes the city’s National Poetry Month Festival, featuring both established and emerging poets. The eighth annual fest was held this April at the Boston Public Library. Writers read from their works in a six-hour marathon.
Three years ago, with friend and fellow poetry enthusiast Doug Holder, Gardner founded a weekly poets group called Breaking Bagels with the Bards. The name came from the group’s original meeting place, the Finagle a Bagel in Harvard Square. When that eatery closed, the Bards switched to alternating meetings at the Au Bon Pain outposts in Davis Square and Central Square. High school graduates to PhDs, the Bards run a wide socioeconomic gamut. Anthologies of members’ poems attract applause outside the café walls.
When he’s not schmoozing with the Bards, Gardner can be found at Borders Books in Downtown Crossing, where another organization he emcees, Tapestry of Voices, invites poets to read each month.
This busy artist, who also finds the time to run his own real estate business, believes the literary arts fill a basic need. “Poetry is very learnable,” he says. “At the community level, people can learn to appreciate poetry, to enjoy poetry, to indulge in poetry, and even to write poetry.
“Even if they’ve never done it before.”
— Nancy Rabinowitz, MA’90
La Dolce Diva
Mezzo-soprano Ja-Naé Duane, AS’00, leads a multitracked life.
She came to Northeastern to study music education. But she also loved to sing. So the West Haven, Connecticut, native capitalized on the university’s create-your-own-major flexibility and, by taking classes at Northeastern and the New England Conservatory, crafted a degree in opera. It was a breakthrough performance: No other Northeastern undergraduate had ever done that before.
For her next act, Duane earned a master’s degree in opera theater at Carnegie Mellon. Then she spent two years at the Boston University Opera Institute. Today, the Boston resident continues to hone her instrument by regularly traveling to New York City for voice coaching at the Metropolitan Opera.
All the work has paid off. She has sung at the White House; Lincoln Center; Boston’s Hatch Shell; and the Mariinsky Theater, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her performance in the 2006 North American premiere of the opera version of Angels in America, at the Boston Center for the Arts, received raves.
Music cognoscenti believe Duane’s voice may even have crossover potential. To test the pop waters, she’ll sing the “Habanera” from Carmen to a funk beat in a music video slated for a September release. Duane also teaches voice as an adjunct instructor at Northeastern.
Oh, and there’s more: In 2005, she founded Wild Women Entrepreneurs, to help women realize their potential. It now has forty-five chapters in six countries. She’s the CEO.
“I wanted to help women both professionally and personally,” says Duane of the company, which offers coaching, mentoring, business-development guidance, and networking opportunities. “Running an international organization made me self-reflect. I’m getting as much out of this as my clients.”
In her many endeavors, Duane’s exotic-sounding name sets her apart from the Average Jo, yet its roots are surprisingly all-American. As a high-school history student, Duane’s mother took a liking to the name Genêt, as in Edmond-Charles “Citizen” Genêt—the French diplomat who in the 1790s tried to draw the United States into France’s war with Great Britain. When she bestowed the name on her daughter, Duane’s mom dressed it up with a little phonetic flair.
Reflecting on her many-faceted existence, though, Duane points to a different eighteenth-century figure as her role model: “If Ben Franklin can do it, so can I.”
— Katy Kramer, MA’00
Animated Ad Man
“I’ve always had a vivid imagination,” says Jeremy Sahlman, AS’03.
“But I had no idea I could make a living by goofing around and making up stories, until someone told me there was a new major that could lead to just that.”
That’s how, in 1999, Sahlman happened to jump into computer animation. Quick cutaway to today: He’s the associate creative director in animation direction at a creative company called Buck (named after Buckminster Fuller), which designs innovative TV ads for some of the world’s leading brands.
As a Northeastern student, “I signed up for animation basics with Ed Andrews,” remembers the Norwich, Vermont, native. “At first, I thought it would just be a fun class I could mess around in. I had no idea it would turn into a career.”
The former class clown had limited technology skills back then. “I had never used a computer until I went to college,” Sahlman says. “But as soon as I realized it could be a creative outlet for me, I was hooked. It was the first time in my life that I could find ways to show people all the ridiculous ideas I had floating around in my head. I would spend hours daydreaming and coming up with strange scenarios and stories.”
After graduation, Sahlman found Boston a tough place to get a lot of industry experience. So he moved to Los Angeles, freelancing for a range of ad companies and working on both the creative and the technical sides of postproduction.
In 2006, he took a full-time position at Buck Los Angeles. His commercials—which are often a mixture of animation, visual effects, and live action—advertise big clients like Toyota Corolla, Burger King, and Scion in prime time on major networks to large audiences.
“Commercials are a great opportunity to tell a short story,” says Sahlman, especially one that’s “strange, weird, and off-topic.” His kind of story.
— Katy Kramer, MA’00