Melissa Officer

Poetry Inside Out (PIO) is The Center for the Art of Translation's literary arts program that fosters imagination and builds student’s problem solving, critical thinking, and literacy skills through the translation and composition of poetry. As a PIO Instructor, I develop a curriculum based on the needs and language backgrounds of the students in each class I teach, using PIO's database of over 400 poem pages, including works by some of the world’s greatest poets, such as Pablo Neruda, Arthur Rimbaud, Li Bai, Anna Akhmatova, Mahmoud Darwish and others, which really allows them to begin thinking about language on advanced levels. A typical PIO classroom residency is comprised of 16 one-hour lessons, which are presented in the classroom and divided into three sequential parts. Lessons 1-6 focus on learning basic literary translation skills; Lessons 7-12 focus on mastering poetic structure, form, and figurative language; Lessons 13-16 of the workshop focus on revision, editing, and performance. The synergy of the two practices—translation and poetry composition—allows PIO participants to fully grasp the power of language. Over the course of a residency, PIO students learn to read for understanding, using context clues, cultural understanding, close reading, and shared dialogue; write to communicate specific points of view and ideas; speak articulately with confidence and clarity; and reason about complex problems, supporting positions with evidence. At the end of a residency, we consolidate all the poems and translations and publish a classroom anthology, including work from every student, and plan a class/school reading, so students have the option to share their poetry with friends and family.

After being a volunteer for the 2008 and 2009 festivals, I was invited to work on the Executive Committee as the Volunteer Coordinator. In my tenure I created a comprehensive volunteer database, created a Facebook Group for volunteers to connect with one another, and founded an online literary magazine for participants and volunteers of the festival to submit material inspired by their Litquake experiences, with the ambition of creating a closer community and fostering collaboration between writers and volunteer. I regularly corresponded with new potential volunteers, which required exemplary communication skills, patience, and an understanding of how to appease, cajole and inspire people from all walks of life who have in common the love of literature and want to be involved somehow. I organized a complex volunteer work schedule for the nine-day festival (over 150 separate events) as well as pre-festival events, like author dinners and auction galas, coordinating these schedules to satisfy the needs of about two dozen producers and over a hundred volunteers.

Upon completion of a three-month internship, I was offered the position of Subsidiary Rights Manager, though remained an active member of the editorial board: reading submissions and corresponding with authors; discussing potential acquisitions in editorial meetings; line-editing, copy-editing and proofreading manuscripts in MS Word, InCopy and in galley and blueline proofs; writing copy for frontlist catalogues and book jackets; negotiating contracts with authors and agents; etc. As Subrights Manager, it was my responsibility to organize our master rights list and manage the subrights we controlled for our backlist and frontlist books, including audio, performance, and electronic, and assisting our foreign rights agent with the sale of foreign English and foreign translation rights. I regularly corresponded with various agents and editors in the publishing industry, as well as agents in the film industry, and worked closely with MacAdam/Cage Editor-in-Chief, Pat Walsh, to become familiar with every aspect of the business, including PR/Marketing, web development and social media, and more.