Steve West

Steve West
Email Address: swest@martinmethodist.edu
Office Phone: 931-363-9858, ext. 3858
Office:  Johnston Center 214

I am a child of the Ozarks, Cleburne County Arkansas, to be exact. I grew up there in a house without indoor plumbing, until my sister married a plumber. I was the first of my family to attend college, getting a degree from the University of Central Arkansas. I taught English and other courses such as photography at a very rural school, Shirley, (population 600, give or take a few people and dogs) for seven years.  I sponsored the Rod and Gun Club, which sounds rather odd now as we encouraged students to bring guns to school, and we could shoot skeet after class. When the white bass were running, we’d go from campus to the river and eat fish and hushpuppies on the banks of  the river. I taught a lot of nature poetry in those days. I drove the bus for the basketball team and was stranded a night or two when it snowed during the game.  I earned my MA degree in English during the summers and left the hills to pursue a PhD from Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. I left Hattiesburg after three years to take a job at Martin College, then a two-year school which was very close to closing. We had only about 200 students when I arrived on the Martin campus in the fall of 1985. The small size attracted me though, as my background has always been in smaller, more intimate schools.

I have returned to my heritage here in the hills of Tennessee. I enjoy bluegrass music and attend as many bluegrass festivals as possible each year. There’s nothing like a banjo and fiddle in a song written by  Bill Monroe. I can’t pick,  but I can certainly grin! I like to travel, especially out west with Bob Wills’ music on the stereo and visit the Big Sky of Montana, roam the Little Bighorn Battlefield,  or meander through the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming. Sunrise on a trout stream in Yellowstone National Park is one of life’s pleasures, much as is a cup of well-brewed coffee in a stained old cup I have owned for years.  I also  attend writing festivals where I write, read, and share my work with other scribblers in places such as Roanoke, Virginia; Harrogate, Tennessee: and Taos, New Mexico, where I hiked up to D.H. Lawrence’s cabin in the high lonesome. I wrote a poem or two straddling the continental divide near Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado, and woke up with snow on my tent in Red Lodge, Montana, on the Fourth of July.