“I'll dent the garage door with my head, siphon Crown Royal
from your liquor cabinet, jump from a gondola in Venice. I'll smash
my ankle with a hammer, drive through stop signs
with my eyes closed, cost you thousands
in medical bills. Forget about sleeping.
I'll dominate the prayers you keep sending up
like the last of flares from an island no one visits.”
– The Real Warnings Are Always Too Late, Rhett Iseman Trull
When Rhett Iseman Trull (Trinity ‘99) was an undergraduate at Duke, she had “one of those life-changing professors that people have.” That professor was Dr. Deborah Pope, who was teaching a poetry seminar in the English department. It was during that class that Trull realized what questions she should ask herself while writing. “It’s not ‘What do I want this piece to be?’” she says, “but rather ‘What does it want to be?’”
During her visit to Duke on November 6, 2015, Trull candidly and kindly answered questions about her experience as a student, poet, writer, and editor. During her time at Duke, she wrote for the student TV station and the Archive, and participated in a women’s writing group at the Women’s Center. She was also, naturally, a voracious reader. And that’s her main advice to undergraduates who want to become professional writers: to read as much as they possibly can.
After graduating, Trull moved to Los Angeles and tried her hand at screenwriting. She asserts that she is “really glad” she went, but that the entertainment world didn’t mesh well with her life. From L.A., Trull returned home to North Carolina, where she received her M.F.A. in poetry from UNC Greensboro. During school, she began submitting her poems widely to journals and publications: “I was sending my work in everywhere.”
Trull explains that when she started tailoring her submissions to journals that she loved, she began to receive acceptance letters. In 2008, Trull’s diligence paid off, and she won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. She published her first collection, The Real Warnings, through Anhinga Press. Her advice to young aspiring writers is to submit to publications that they already read and admire. During her visit with Duke English students, she also distributed a list of different presses and journals to inform and inspire current college writers. Among those journals was Cave Wall Press.
Trull is the creator and editor of Cave Wall, a twice-yearly publication out of Greensboro. Each issue features roughly thirty poems, which Trull narrows down from approximately 2,500 to 3,000 submissions. Those publication percentages are certainly intimidating, but Trull has heartening advice to give: “Take any encouragement from a publisher as a form of acceptance,” she says, even if that encouragement is accompanied by a rejection letter. “If they’re saying anything to you specifically, then they liked your work.”
When it comes to submitting writing, Trull advises students to “aim high” and to not shy away from submitting to competitive journals. She continues to aim high herself, publishing poems, essays, and children’s stories while also working on her own young adult novel. Trull explains that she continues to draw from her time in college, and she tells students to hold onto their memories. She says, “Everything you’re experiencing now can come back as a story or a poem, years and years down the road.”
Sofia Manfredi
Digital Media Intern
Duke University English Department
English Department
