Writer and poet Victoria Redel '80 returned to her alma mater last night to share her personal experiences and demonstrate her comprehension of human relationships.
After being introduced by English Professor Tom Sleigh, Redel stepped up to the podium, strikingly clad in black from head to toe. She read her poetry and prose to and established a rapport with an attentive audience of more than 50 people in the warm glow of the Wren Room of Sanborn House.
Redel currently resides and teaches in New York. She works for the Albert Oliver Foundation to New England private schools and teaches at the Goddard College master of fine arts program in creative writing.
Flipping back her long, dark hair, Redel proceeded to recite a number of poems from her collection "America the World" and read a short story from "Where the Road Bottoms Out."
She also read two new poems which represented "a different place that I'm at."
Redel's work is unfettered by inhibition and lined with humor, anguish, as well as desire. She stretched the imagination in reciting the fanciful "Singing to Tony Bennett's Cock."
In "Where the Road Bottoms Out," Redel chronicled one woman's tormented relationship with her mother.
She explored the joys and confusion of motherhood in a trio of poems titled "Third Month," "Ninth Month" and "Milk."
Redel laughingly recounted an episode in which a young man at a university she visited breathlessly exclaimed, "I can't tell you how much this poem ["Milk"] affected me."
"Tell me!" Redel had replied, amused by the man's enthusiasm with pregnancy.
