By Bailey Musselman '18

Knox College faculty member Gina Franco, associate professor of English, was recently the second participant ever to be awarded the PINTURA:PALABRA D.C. Residency.  With the support of Letras Latinas, Franco visited and worked in Washington, D.C., to see how the historical city could influence her writing. 

The residency program is a three-year initiative to sponsor three Latina poets in a weeklong writing residency fellowship. The initiative's goal is "to provide Latina poets an opportunity to visit art galleries and to write poems about art from our nation's capital," Franco said.

In addition to writing about art while in Washington, Franco also made an audio recording for the Library of Congress' "Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers." That project is a collaboration with Letras Latinas, which is the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.

Franco is author of a collection of poems, The Keepsake Storm. Her work also has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Black Warrior Review, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, and A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years.

Before embarking on her recent journey to Washington, D.C., for the writing residency, Franco discussed it with another Knox faculty member, John and Elaine Fellowes Distinguished Chair of English Rob Smith. Smith recommended that Franco research James Hampton's artwork, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. 

Hampton spent more than 14 years on the piece, which was constructed from found objects, such as old furniture and discarded light bulbs. Franco started working with Sharon Clayton, associate librarian at Knox's Seymour Library, to further her research on Hampton, who became the center of her creative inspiration for the residency.

"The Throne represents the kind of visionary, devotional art that interests me most," said Franco. "I wanted to write poems in response to The Throne that discover more of the theological and existential realities at work in Hampton's complex eschatological vision of the profane made sacred."

During her residency, Franco often walked to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to study the piece in person. She said she spent a lot of time writing "very bare reactions to the piece and to the museum space it inhabited." 

"I'd just sit for a few hours looking at The Throne, listening to people as they engaged the piece, and having some discussions with one of the museum's security guards, who'd become profoundly attached to this piece," said Franco. "I think that was what was most remarkable about sitting there day after day: seeing the awe on people's faces as they suddenly turned a corner to come face to face with this work that seemed to have come from another world."

Franco attributes her career success to the years she's spent at Knox. She said she is grateful to work at an institution that "financially supports research of all kinds among students and professors."

"Knox wants to support us as we live the life of the mind," she said. "Thinking, reading, writing, experimenting—these give dignity and meaning to human life, and I believe that Knox has always been a steward and protector of this work. That's exactly what Knox did when they sponsored my travel to D.C." 

Franco said another big reason for her success as a writer is her daily interaction with her students, who have made her "think harder and write better."

"Because our students are so intelligent, because they come from such diverse backgrounds, they constantly challenge me to see the world and myself anew," she said. "In the end, that is poetry: this daily interaction with curious people that breaks through a desensitized normalcy to reveal the abundant world, a world more creative and impossible than we could have imagined."