So much talent in one room

On Wednesday, November 14th, Barnard alumna and guitarist, lyricist, and vocalist of Speedy Ortiz, Sadie Dupuis ’11 returned to campus to discuss the release of her new book of poetry, Mouthguard. The event was co-sponsored by Women Poets at Barnard and Dupuis was joined on stage by her college mentor Saskia Hamilton, Professor of English at Barnard. Speedy Ortiz fangirls Zoe Sottile and Ramisa Murshed went to check it out.

Listening to Sadie Dupuis read poetry, the main impression she imparts is that you have no idea where she’s going to take you next. It’s not a bad feeling: more like following someone you really trust. As the poet and songwriter herself remarked during her discussion with her own on-campus mentor: “If I knew where a poem would end it would be terrible. I always want the next thing to happen to surprise me.”

The evening started with a selection of poems from Dupuis’s recently released book of poems, Mouthguard, which she says she would have never written if she hadn’t gone to Barnard. Speedy Ortiz’s independent rock songs are known for their dark, sharp lyricism, which was matched by Dupuis’s poetry. Her poems were at turns funny, disorienting, graphic, sad, and beautiful. One poem entitled “Me and Every Color” that contemplated origin stories and darkness ended with the line, “I only came to ruin beauty’s eggy face.”

She used inventive similes. One poem entitled “I Don’t Even Like Candy” included the line, “This feels like nursing a surrogate after my cub has perished.”

In another, called “Milk Is Huge,” she said, “I do secret things and reveal them blandly / Look close, I am horrible.”

She prefaced one piece by telling a story about a classmate in a creative writing workshop who referenced ghosts, and her own indignant suspicion that the classmate didn’t really believe in ghosts: “You want to defend ghosts from this person’s bad work.” The sincerity of this belief in things that are dark and unexplainable pervaded Dupuis’s readings. The poem referenced the camp terror of horror movies, “Like a victim alone in a house like someone is inside the house the call is coming from inside.”

After the reading, Dupuis was joined on stage by Barnard English professor and her own academic mentor Saskia Hamilton.

Dupuis began by discussing her unique path to Barnard. She started off as a math student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But after taking an errant poetry workshop, she was so enraptured by the subject she applied to transfer mid-semester to study creative writing. After graduation, she headed to a poetry MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Mouthguard represents an updated version of the thesis work she wrote for that program.

She reflected on how working on her MFA was an overwhelming time for her, as she was rushing to finish her degree while simultaneously being in bands and touring. After completing her degree, she continued with music and put off publishing Mouthguard, something she had spent the past three years working on.

Dupuis didn’t feel precious about her poems at all and said that she was ultimately her biggest critic. Although the published version of Mouthguard wasn’t necessarily the original manuscript she wrote for her MFA program, most of the content stayed true to the original.

Hamilton also asked Dupuis about her approach to songwriting and whether it was similar to her approach to poetry, to which Dupuis responded that when it comes to songwriting, she’s always written the music before the lyrics. “It’s almost like a crossword puzzle, rather than creating a whole new thing,” she said. In response to a question about how she chose the name Sad13, she mentioned that she came up with it as a DJ name and liked it so much that she decided to use it for everything. It was like “tapping into adolescent sadness,” she joked.

Continuing the conversation, Dupuis then talked more about her music, discussing various topics from what she listens to for inspiration (having a “what I listened to this week” rather than having an “all-time favorites” list), who she draws influence from (Pavement, to which she had an email address dedicated to), and what she tends to write about (“I don’t feel the need to write about my personal problems anymore when there are bigger issues facing the community”).

Finally, Dupuis told the audience that what’s most important to her is pursuing her artistic ideas based on what makes her happy over what makes others happy.

The conversation was followed by a solo performance by Dupuis (her first in about three years!) and a short audience Q&A.

Image via Barnard College