Creative writing lecturer and former Stegner Fellow Keith Ekiss teaches the popular sophomore Introductory Seminar ENGLISH 13Q: “Imaginative Realms,” which provides a hands-on exploration of fantastical and speculative fiction, among other courses. His new poetry collection, “Burial Fragments,” was released in February by Gunpowder Press. Ekiss is also the founder of Poet’s House, a writing studio held on campus at Mariposa House, open to writers of all stripes.

Ekiss recently sat down with The Daily to discuss the writing studio and its development over the course of its 18-year history.

The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): How did you come to be involved with Poet’s House?

Keith Ekiss (KE): I started Poet’s House 18 years ago, when I first started as a lecturer at Stanford. I was looking for a way to increase student involvement with the writing world, outside of classrooms and outside of our visiting writers who come to campus. Something that was hands-on, where students would come in with nothing and leave with the start of some new poems.

TSD: How do you usually prepare each session?

KE: There’s usually a theme. I’ll either choose as a theme something that I already teach in ENGLISH 92, the introductory poetry class… the other direction I’ll go is using Poet’s House as a way to explore something that’s new and interesting to me. 

For example, a few years ago I really got interested in the idea of poems as portraits: how you could use a poem to write a portrait of another person. So we did a session on poems and portraiture. Or, I’m interested in the overlap between storytelling and poetry. So [Poet’s House] looked at poems that tell stories.

TSD: What are some things you’ve learned throughout these 18 years running Poet’s House?

KE: One of the things I learned right away… the very first time I did Poet’s House, we ordered pizza in advance. We had three boxes of pizza. We scheduled the terrace room over in the English department and no one showed. 

This other lecturer in the English department, Andrew Aldschule, was a fiction writer. He walked by and he’s like, “Hey, Keith, what’s going on?”

I said, “Well, I’m doing this new thing called Poet’s House, but nobody showed.” 

So Andrew and I sat there and ate pizza for a half an hour. And what I realized was that students at Stanford are busy. Students at Stanford have a lot of things going on, and you have to kind of compete for student attention. After that, I advertised more assertively and more widely, and then we started getting six or eight students, and then pretty soon we would sometimes get 14 or 15 students.

TSD: Do you ever encounter people who are seeking help with writer’s block or insecurity about their work? 

KE: Sometimes students will talk to me afterwards and they’ll want general advice. I always tell them writing always starts with reading. If you want to write, you’ve got to read. 

A good way of doing that is, you need one poem, or one poet, and a sense of curiosity. If you find a poem you like, let’s say by Ada Limón, read more poems by Ada Limón. Find out who Ada Limón likes to read or who her teachers were. Pretty soon, you’ve got this whole galaxy of writers that you can connect with and that will feed into your reading. 

I get writer’s block sometimes, I don’t know, you just have to do it. One thing you’ll hear writing instructors say is “lower the bar.” If you have writer’s block, it’s because you’re probably being too hard on yourself before you’ve even written anything. 

TSD: Can you think of any memorable success stories of people who have benefited from the writing studio?

KE: I’ve been teaching here 18 years. And I’m just getting to the point where students who I had are now publishing their first books, which is not too uncommon. These are students who are now in their mid to late thirties. 

Poet’s House was helpful in supporting those writers, but really, it’s the whole creative writing ecosystem. The courses, the visiting writers we get, Poet’s House, you’ve probably heard of the Writer’s Studio [at the Hume Center]. We now have writing drop-ins with our peer mentors in creative writing. We have a kind of ecosystem that supports students.