Robert Randolph, chairperson of the English and Foreign Languages Department, recently published a poem, “The Mayor,” in an online journal, after working on the piece for three years.
Randolph said “The Mayor” is based on images of what the speaker would look for in a good mayor, and he spent a long time tinkering with the piece.
“I am not sure what inspired it,” he said. “Often my poems start with images that came along and seem interesting, and I write what comes along connected to it… “The Mayor” took about three years to write because I began working with one of the images long ago and never felt comfortable with whatever I wrote tied to that image, although I went through many drafts over those years.”
Over the course of his academic career, Randolph has published approximately 60 different poems in about 40 separate journals, as well as a book of poetry, dozens of essays and several articles. Randolph said that staying active in the writing community has helped him immensely as an educator.
“I believe that a teacher who ‘practices what he or she preaches’ stands a good chance of being a good teacher about that subject,” he said. “When that practice is connected to a teacher’s desire to help students share the topic, the teacher offers both theory and practice to the student.”
Randolph also recently published “The Sad Man in the Moon,” in a hardback anthology, The Moon, published by Outrider Press. For him, writing is simply part of life.
“Writers write, dancers dance, preachers preach, singers sing, teachers teach, and so on,” he said. “Whatever passion gets ‘in the blood’ of the teacher, that teacher wants to do and to share.”
Founded in 1849 by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Waynesburg University is located on a traditional campus in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, with three additional sites located in the Pittsburgh region. The University is one of only 22 Bonner Scholar schools in the country, offering local, regional and international opportunities to touch the lives of others through service.
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