Malcolm Friend Talks Poetry, Politics with Writing and Publishing Students

Students in Lincoln Park’s Writing and Publishing Department recently got a tutorial in poetry and politics from Pittsburgh writer Malcolm Friend.

Friend, the author of the award-winning 2018 poetry collection Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple, visited Lincoln Park for three days in November to work with high school and middle school students.

The focus of Friend’s master classes for high school students was to expand on the idea that politics is more than simply what appears on the news. He led students through a selection of poems, ranging from classic to modern, and featuring voices that have traditionally been underrepresented in poetry. Friend then guided students in the writing of poetic styles such as the ode and the aubade.

He told Lincoln Park’s school newspaper, The SIREN, that “I try to write from the idea that writing can belong to anyone.”

Friend is a native of Seattle, who graduated from Vanderbilt University. While at Vanderbilt, he received the 2014 Merrill Moore Prize for his poetry.

He later earned his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where he now serves as a visiting lecturer. In 2017, his first chapbook, mxd kd mixtape, was published by Glass Poetry, and he followed that up with Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple, which was chosen by Cynthia Arrieu-King as the 2017 winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Prize.

Currently a poetry editor at FreezeRay Poetry, Friend also has received awards and fellowships from such organizations as CantoMundo, Backbone Press, the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics, and the University of Memphis.

Friend was selected as the third writer in Lincoln Park’s Visiting Writers Program. The program was started by Cindy West, who teaches middle school Writing and Publishing students.

West began the initiative in 2017, when best-selling author and ghostwriter Toni Robino visited Lincoln Park. Last year, young adult author Wende Dikec became the second visiting writer in the program. And this year, Friend became the first poet to appear in the series.

“Malcolm Friend was the perfect choice for the third year of the Writers Series. He’s young, hip, and award-winning, and related well to the students,” said West. “The way he transitioned his approach to sharing his work from high school to middle school was a pleasure to watch.”

She added, “The middle schoolers even stood in line to get his autograph!”

Seventh-grader Curtjuan Moore said he enjoyed Friend’s three-day master class for middle school students, which focused on the role of sampling in both music and poetry.

“It taught me new ways to write poems,” said Moore, who is from Aliquippa.

His classmate Quincy Sirko, a seventh-grader from Central Valley, said she appreciated the chance to get a different perspective about writing, as well as Friend’s encouragement to experiment with new styles.

“He told us that you have to keep trying a new thing until you gain fluency in it,” Sirko said.

Although he’s a rising star in the poetry field, Friend gave Writing and Publishing students some old-fashioned advice.

“Keep reading,” he said. “It’s so easy to get lost in writing that you forget to read.”