A University of Iowa poet and creative writing professor will be in central Iowa tomorrow to promote her debut novel, which reimagines the definition of an epic poem. Paige Lewis is in her fifth year of teaching at the Iowa City institution and her book, “Canon,” took her almost eight years to complete.
“It is about two heroes on separate journeys to kill the same man, and one of the heroes is sent by God and the other hero is going against God’s wishes,” Lewis says, “so it follows their sort of parallel journeys and we get to see whether or not they succeed.”
Lewis’ collection of poems, “Space Struck,” was named one of the Best Books of 2019 by Book Riot. Lewis says poetry continues to have a healthy following, though it sometimes frightens off potential readers before they can truly grasp all it can encompass.
“Poetry is perhaps taught in high schools as being something that needs to be figured out, as like a puzzle that needs to be solved,” Lewis says. “I don’t think that that’s how we should look at poetry, but I do think that that is why so many people are scared of poetry but I think there are a lot of poetry readers out there.”
Lewis will be appearing at the Ankeny campus of Des Moines Area Community College along with her poet-husband, UI English professor Kaveh Akbar, whose debut novel, “Martyr,” became a New York Times best seller in 2024. In a Radio Iowa interview, Lewis was asked if it’s any reflection on poetry that she and her spouse have both turned to writing novels.
“Kaveh and I just wanted to see what we could do with a little bit more room in our books, and so we tried some fiction. But poetry is still my first love. I’m always going to be going back to it,” Lewis says. “In fact, I think of ‘Canon’ as a sort of epic poem, but it’s just playing a little bit more with the genre than a typical epic poem, so we got to call it a novel.”
Lewis says she’s working on a new collection of poetry as well as a science fiction novel. In her creative writing course at the UI, she says there’s an emphasis on “creative,” as poetry shouldn’t be confined to rhymes, for example.
“We encourage our early students not to rhyme at all and let them sort of experiment a little bit more with their ideas and not feel so sort of weighed down by their expectations of what a poem can be,” she says.
Lewis and Akbar are scheduled to speak at DMACC at 11:15 AM as part of the Ankeny campus’ Celebration of Literary Arts Festival. While supplies last, there will free books available from both authors.
Hear Lewis’ full interview with Matt Kelley below:
