The Spoken Word Alliance at Tufts and Parnassus, a recently formed literary magazine, have joined the literary scene on campus this semester.
The Canon, the Tufts literary journal, wrote on its website that Tufts lacks a literary scene. The two newly formed groups, however, aim to build up that very presence.
Junior Ethan Wise, who acts as producer of SWAT, elaborated on the sparse literary scene on campus.
I guess what I would say is that I've yet to notice its presence, which is maybe indicative of its presence," Wise said.
Publications currently on campus that feature student-produced work include the Canon, Tufts Observer, Tufts Public Journal and the Daily, among others. After losing its Tufts Community Union Judiciary recognition this spring, the Primary Source has recently returned to campus. Parnassus publishes poetry, fiction, non-fiction and photography.
Wise explained that the goal of SWAT is to facilitate more literary events on campus. Julia Malleck, founder of Parnassus, added that Parnassus will provide new programming around campus as well.
"We are aiming to be a literary magazine, but we also want to create a larger sort of literary and arts community surrounded by it," Malleck, a sophomore, said. "So we want to hold workshops, story slams, chalking about our favorite literature."
This Wednesday evening, Parnassus members "chalked" in their favorite quotes, lyrics or phrases on Tisch patio. Parnassus also collaborated with SWAT to hand out printouts of free poems in Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center.
"It's very much about including the entire community in arts and writing," Malleck said.
Malleck said that she expected more in terms of literary outlets at a university like Tufts and that these types of events will hopefully change that for the better.
Despite the recent upswing in the activity related to publications on campus, Leonna Hill, a junior majoring in English, said that the literary scene is still pretty quiet.
"To be honest I don't think there is a big presence," she said. "I'm an English major, and I don't see English book clubs around campus as much as I see activism clubs around."
Michael Downing, a lecturer in the Department of English, said that having an active print publication community can be difficult in general, since such publications have been suffering in recent years due to competition with online literary outlets.
"I think these things are very hard to make a go of," Downing said. "I think the world is really hard on print material of all kinds right now. ... Having time to produce it and then having some way of making people think they are supposed to be interested in the print version of it - it's a challenge."
Sophomore Moira Lavelle, however, said the literary scene at Tufts is partly why she made the decision to come here.
"When I was talking to my parents about my choices, I argued that we had the Daily, and the Observer, the Public Journal and the Canon and we had so many different outlets," Lavelle, a news writer for the Observer, said. "And that was one of my reasons for coming here."
Although Lavelle thinks the literary scene is visible, she also pointed out how it is not yet a concrete and unified community.
"I think [the literary scene] is very much alive but still struggling to attain a certain level of institutionalized structure," Lavelle said. "I think currently we have a lot of disparate outlets."
Wise echoed the sentiments that the literary scene is still in an abstract form.
"The literary scene at Tufts is a really big,
multi-faceted and disparate entity, if it's even a single entity, which I don't know if I believe it is," Wise said. "You have the Daily, you have the Canon, you have someone that is starting a poetry literary magazine, you have SWAT, you have all of these other things, but we are not unified under one larger banner."
According to Lavelle, the perception that the literary scene is inactive here is an outdated one.
"I don't know why the perception is that the literary scene doesn't exist," Lavelle said. "I think it might be one of those things where it didn't exist five years ago and we still have that same rhetoric. It's like how we say that Lewis is still a gross dorm, but it got redone
