Creative Writing student wins Ruth Lilly Fellowship

14 September 2006

David Krump, a second year student on Oxford University’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing course, has won the prestigious 2006 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. The Fellowship carries an award of $15,000, which is among the largest offered to aspiring writers in the United States. The award aims to nurture young poets at the beginning of their careers and allows them to continue in their study and writing of poetry.

David Krump, from Kellogg College, said: ‘ I feel honoured to be a Ruth Lilly Fellow, especially considering the quality work the other nominees must have produced. The Fellowship suggests to me that I am heading in a proper direction. I hope one day to be a poet, rather than one who constantly attempts writing poems.

‘The Master of Studies course has alerted me to new possibilities for the creative direction of my work. The intensity of the course mirrors the intensity of those of us working on it.’

David submitted ten poems, which the Editor of the Foundation’s Poetry magazine, Christian Winman, described as ‘consistently surprising, formally inventive and moving.’

The competition, which is open to American citizens under 30 years old who are studying creative writing or English, attracted 145 entries this year. The Poetry Foundation, which organised the award is one of the largest literary organisations in the world. Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, its magazine is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

David Krump’s poem ‘Carnival’:

‘I’d like to see you this way: in the café beside
the busy skirt of the waitress and a steady
sun on the chubby child’s head. We’ll order eggs
that arrive like broken atoms and coffee dark

and formulaic as all our evenings below these hard skies.
We’ll sip it hot and make little remark
while shooting from the city’s center silver trains
and time depart, point by point to the far towns

and tired stations of our simple stories. I’ll tell you
everything. While the cargo passes from Eden
to Nod and a little boat works the wind
whipping it sick in the harbour, one yellow sail, small

against the blue world, in a nearer park, a bright girl discovers
flight through the sudden song of birds, an ageing father
checkmates his son, laughter somersaults across cut grass,
a cricket plays the wicked piccolo of its legs,

I’ll push my empty plate aside and slide my solid hand
across the checkered plastic tablecloth to assure
you: See? You are you again – flesh and spine – not even
half the ghost you thought you were.’

The Master of Studies in Creative Writing has attracted international attention since it was launched in October 2005. For more information, go to http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/mstcw and http://www.poetryfoundation.org/