Despite being Wichita State’s newest addition to its creative writing faculty, Adam Scheffler is already an experienced published author. The new assistant professor has literary merit in two poetry collections: “Heartworm” — winner of the 2021 Moon City Press Poetry Award — and “A Dog’s Life” — which won the 2015 Jacar Press Book Contest.
Scheffler was chosen as the first guest of the 2024-2025 calendar for the “Writing Now/Reading Now” speaker series, a WSU event that partners the English Department with the Ulrich Museum of Art and Watermark Books & Cafe to spotlight the literary talent of faculty, visiting authors and students.
The event — joined by friends, faculty and students at the Ulrich museum — featured readings of a handful of poems from his first book, “A Dog’s Life.” Prior to the event, facilitators offered a reception with Scheffler outside, where attendees mingled with each other before jumping over chairs — literally — into the tightly packed assembly room for the reading.
Jason Allen, a fellow assistant professor in Creative Writing and previous Writing Now/Reading Now guest, introduced Scheffler by quoting praise for his work from contemporary poet Bob Hickok, saying, “They (poems) articulate our good fortune to be alive.”
While Scheffler addressed a wide array of dark themes, such as age, dread and death throughout the evening, he also weaved in dry bouts of humor to balance his poems.
“Every dog at your birth is now dead,” he said, reciting the first line of “Contemporaries,” referencing the book’s namesake. The chronologically ordered poem portrayed a series of deaths among animals and humans over the course of one’s life, setting an earnest tone for the rest of the night.
In reflecting on “Contemporaries,” Scheffler said, “I was also just thinking (about) the strangeness of feeling like the 20th century is something that’s kind of slipping away at something important.”
Other poems, such as “Partner,” “I Have Lots of Hearts” and “Women and Dogs” were assured by Scheffler to be “happier” and “less heavier” but even then, the poems contained themes of jealousy and agita, addressing the reality of individuals tendencies to make “destructive choices.”
Additionally, he read “Tamiami Trail Signs,” a call-and-response poem that relied on the function of Google to compute answers to questions that Scheffler asked. Before he began, Scheffler invited his student, Jack Anderson, to join him in the poetry reading, where they later orated an eccentric back-and-forth dialogue of prose. The poem asks questions like “Why do I cry?” with non-linear answers, such as “When I sing,” with Scheffler deeming these responses as “surprising” and “mysterious.”
Scheffler’s last reading was “The Dead After,” a contemplative poem on the invisible nature of death during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scheffler said he found inspiration in this poem from observing a concert in 2020 where all attendees stood six feet apart. He emphasized the weighted atmosphere between each individual, and that “when it comes to everyday death, it always feels like it’s sort of tucked away.”
“Never have I seen us leave such space for them, six feet left between us that nobody filled in,” he said, reciting the final line of the poem.
The evening ended on a lighter note with Scheffler thanking the audience — notably students who had already spent time with him in class — for coming, followed by laughter and applause.
Anderson, the student who assisted Scheffler in “Tamiami Trail Signs,” later opened up about his appreciation for teachers like Scheffler who have the power to make academia exciting and engaging to any student.
Despite Scheffler having a Harvard PhD in English and garnering attention from esteemed journals, such as the “American Poetry Review, Anderson noted that what distinguishes Scheffler as a poet is not his achievements, but his capacity to connect with his audience regardless of knowledge or skill level.
“His diction, it’s so accessible, you know?” Anderson said. “You can really get into his poems, and you don’t have to be from any certain educational background or professional background … It’s just really fun to read his poems … the quality of a great artist is … they make you feel less alone.”
