Bound by Verse: Prof. Donika Kelly and Rising Poet Sydney Mayes
PHOTO COURTESY SYDNEY MAYES
Donika Kelly and Sydney Mayes reunite at last year’s Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee.
When poet and Iowa associate English professor Donika Kelly taught Sydney Mayes in a 2021 honors undergraduate poetry workshop on the “Lyric I,” the course was organized around a nonprescriptive principle: It is more challenging, and more life-giving, to say why someone’s poem works than why it doesn’t.
“In my class, students are not allowed to ‘fix’ each other’s pieces by declaring what’s wrong,” says Kelly, a past National Endowment of the Arts fellow whose poetry collection Bestiary was longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award. “Instead of telling someone what to do, I ask them to say how they read the poem and what is already working.”
This way of reading—supporting what’s there, resisting the simpler work of “cut this, move that”—extends beyond the page into a philosophy that now defines their relationship as mentor and mentee.
During that first semester, Mayes came to office hours every week, bringing poems and questions. “Having another queer Black woman in my space pushed me to articulate things I wouldn’t have had the language for had she not been there,” says the published poet from Denver.
An independent study on Black women poets followed. Mayes still draws on those authors in her current writing. Kelly, who adds that she too needed to read those poets at that time, calls Mayes’ work “stellar, grounded, phenomenal—and she also doesn’t just rely on talent. Sydney came in with the work. That is the thing that brought us together.”
Mayes (23BA) graduated from Iowa and is following her professor’s footsteps in pursuing a graduate degree at Vanderbilt University. Meanwhile, Kelly’s advising now includes practical tips her grandfather once doled out—don’t forget the oil change, set aside this much for savings.
Kelly and Mayes shared a few secrets to their flourishing mentor-mentee relationship:
- Make time for mentorship: Moving away from the structure of the classroom takes time. Mayes is still learning to address Dr. Kelly by her first name. She calls her former professor regularly, knowing Kelly prefers speaking on the phone over texting. (“This is big. I hate the phone,” says Mayes.)
- Say the hard thing: Mayes, after graduating, was hesitant to show Kelly a manuscript she felt certain was ready to be published as her first book. “Everyone else had seen it; I was fixated on the book going out,” says Mayes, who now serves as the executive editor of Nashville Review. “But I wanted [Kelly’s] approval more than anything first. She read it and said, ‘This is not your book.’ ... I had to finish crying before I could take the feedback. Now it doesn’t feel like something I’m going to wake up one day and regret.”
- Let it be uneven: In a cultural moment that emphasizes reciprocity, embrace the lopsidedness of a mentor relationship. Kelly, who had good mentors while earning a PhD, felt the lack of one in her poetry life after publishing her first book. That realization of what she had been missing helped her recognize the potential to build something with Mayes. “Can I shine a little light on what could happen? Can I make some recommendations and then step back?” Kelly wondered.
Both poets agree that an artist’s life is unscripted and that you need your people—peers, mentors, compatriots—to guide the way.