hika.

Cooper, a freshman (potential English major), is the author of the poem “An Ode to Bender,” which will be included in our published copy coming out in late-April of this year.

What inspired you to write this poem, (“An Ode to Bender”)?

I’d say that my experience with this poem specifically, it felt like a culmination of my writing experience, especially in high school. I haven’t had much success when it comes to submission and publication. So, a lot of my poetry was left in notebooks, and that pent, it felt like it pent up a lot of angst, and not necessarily frustration, but doubt in the system. And… I felt that… if I wanted to take one last stab at submitting something, it would be something that captured that teenage angst and really… directed it towards something that…was very poignant. But at the same time, it’s very easy to digest and understand through some of the levity that I believe also is present in the poem itself. 

Since you’ve been here, have you had good experiences with the other literary magazines on campus, including us? Or has it been the opposite?

I haven’t necessarily had negative interactions with any of the literary magazines. I’ve had brushes with a couple of them. I felt, like, passing interactions, especially when it comes to, like, being on the consuming side of… of literacy and writing. I’ve had a lot of interactions with reading, (creative works), a lot, but not too many in-depth interactions with the magazines themselves. 

Is it (“An Ode to Bender”) supposed to be short? Would you like to make it longer or is that, was that your intention to make it as long as it is? 

I mean, I think that lots of poets go into the process wanting a very large poem, something that has a lot of weight to it, and then someone sees it, it’s just like, wow; that’s very impressive. But, I’ve found that in my experience, (I like to write) shorter poems and littler poems. To me, especially if the writer really knows how to use it. (Shorter poems) can do a lot more and really satisfy the reader a lot more. So, I would say that had you caught me like 3 years earlier, I’d say: “yeah, of course, I’d want to make it longer,” but I found that I’ve found that it does its job very well and that I’m very happy with it. 

If you were to start your own literary magazine here on campus, what would you call it and what would that look like if you were given that chance? 

I’ve thought about it a lot, but I love the simplicity, especially of HIKA as like a monosyllabic expression. It, to me, really caught my eye, and it caught my ear when people were talking about it. So, I can’t say that I have an answer, but I’d love to have something that is short and to the point, maybe something that has an acronym in it as well. Something that can really be condensed to the point where you need very little mental space to remember it. 

Did it take you long to create this poem or was it relatively simple to come up with? Talk me through your writing process for this poem in particular.

This poem especially, I believe, started a long time ago. All of my past writing has sort of really led up to this point. I’d say that this poem especially started with my father. I had a lot of experiences with him consuming art, especially in a more visual medium, just because he is a painter. We spent a lot of time with painting, and I always walked behind him. But… through that experience, whenever I were to catch his attention, he would turn in such a way that his elbow would strike my head, whenever he turned around to look at me. So, that sort of experience of something being very, very striking, starting from very, very young, has sort of stuck with me and I’ve tried to put it into a visual, or not a visual, but a poetic form. So, that correlation between like affection and and this like paternal love and physical violence started long ago, so I’d say that that would contribute to it. So, depending on where you start your mark, I’d say that this poem could have been started 15 years ago, or this work could have been started two weeks ago. And then that writing process of course is a lot smaller, on a much shorter scale, with a couple days of really pairing down what I would like to say and then concentrating that into the 3 lines, then sending it to a literary magazine.