Carol Samson
PhD in English/Creative Writing

1. Background
I studied for my B.A. in English at Colorado State University, and the course I enjoyed the most was a page-by-page study of Moby Dick taught by a Melville scholar who told us, Everything I am is in this book, and who proceeded to act out the entire novel. I went on to study for my M.A. in Theatre History at Colorado State University where I wrote my thesis on the 17th c. French theatre troupe of Moliere. In particular, I researched documents in French pertaining to the troupe, and I focused on the record-keeper Charles Varlet de la Grange who kept a personal record book wherein he ceremoniously marked, among other things, the days when the actresses refused to perform. I received my Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing here at the University of Denver. My dissertation is a collection of stories, They Say the Owl was a Bakers Daughter.

2. Writing Process
I appreciate what Henry James said about consciousness being a gigantic spider web that collects particles. I know how to wait for the particles. I collect them. Like one of those gleaners, the field women who bend to pick things from the ground in that old French painting, I like to sort through the leftover bits: orange things, carrots or yams, things I choose because I like the sound of the words, oddments.

3. What I enjoy about writing:
Once in a writing seminar where we spent 4-5 hours a day freewriting, I realized that writing is surprise, that a word comes when it wants to, that an image waits and leaps like Elizabeth Bishops old fish, bringing its history with it.

4. Teaching Philosophy:
In one word: patience.

I believe in encouragement.

I believe that you cannot push a string.

5. Why did you become a writing teacher?
At the old Thatcher School in first grade reading class, five of us sat in a small room with tall and wooden-framed windows, panels of glass that opened with a lengthy wooden pole lifted to the high locks. The day I remember is the day the elderly teacher, a saintly woman with watery-blue eyes, wrote the word cinnamon on the board. She told us to open our hands. She put a teaspoon of cinnamon, mixed with sugar -- as I was only to understand later, in our palms. She told us to taste it. I saw the word on the chalkboard. I lifted my hand to my mouth, and at that moment I tasted language. As I walked home, I thought about the sweetness. I understood that I could store the word in memory and write it later on a tablet with a pencil.

I think I am a writer, if not a writing teacher, because of that moment.

6. Something you might not know about me:
I keep a small ivory statue on my writing desk. It is a Chinese horse, its right forefoot lifted, its head looking toward the clouds. The Chinese horse is covered with fine, black ink drawings, hand-etched swallow birds, and flowers. Its belly is marked with a lotus blossom. I bought this small statue at an antique store. It may or may not be ivory.

Im told that if you heat an embroidery needle and press it into such a piece, that if it is nothing but ivory-colored plastic, the needle will pierce the material, making a small hole. If the statue is ivory, the needle will not make any marks.

I do not know if the horse on my desk is old ivory or plastic.

I will never heat the needle to find out.

What you need to know is that the horses saddle has been carved as if it were a leather seat covered with a silken drapery and that the horses tail is wrapped in carved ribbons as if this small horse is about to enter a ceremony.

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