‘The Poetry of Food’ and the Power of Collaboration

Roger Kurtz, PhD, professor of English and head of the Department of English and Philosophy, spoke at the Nov. 21 luncheon for students, faculty and deans from the College of Nursing and Health Professions and the College of Arts and Sciences.

The starter was a Drexel Writing Festival food writing workshop led by Jonathan Deutsch, PhD, a Drexel University professor in the Food and Hospitality Management program in the College of Nursing and Health Professions and director of the Drexel Food Lab.

The main course, “English 301: The Poetry of Food,” was taught by Jill Moses, an associate teaching professor in the Department of English and Philosophy who had attended that workshop. She was so inspired that she later developed that one-credit colloquium for English majors, which was held in the fall of 2023. During the class, students read contemporary poems about food and the culture and practices of eating, and they also wrote poems and essays about their own experiences and memories. Those writings were later compiled into a chapbook, also titled “The Poetry of Food,” that was formatted, edited and published by undergraduate student interns and co-ops involved with the Drexel Publishing Group. Every item on the publication’s cover related to published pieces in the book, as designed by Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design product design major Isabella Cuares during an internship.

The final offering was a three-course lunch inspired by “The Poetry of Food.” On Nov. 21, faculty and deans from both the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Nursing and Health Professions, as well as students from “The Poetry of Food” class, came together for a meal and reading at Drexel’s Academic Bistro, the University’s student-run dining room. The idea came from a meal shared there between Roger Kurtz, PhD, professor of English and head of the Department of English and Philosophy, and Rosemary Trout, DHSc, associate clinical professor and program director of culinary arts and food science, along with other faculty members.

Culinary arts and food science students prepared and served the three-course meal under the direction of faculty from the Food and Hospitality Management program. Assistant clinical professor Richard Pepino designed the menu around his Italian family recipes after reading how Drexel students wrote about their families in “The Poetry of Food.” The “front-of-house” service for the family-style meal was hosted by hospitality management students taught by Paul O’Neill, an assistant clinical professor. 

The resulting menu: antipasti and insalata as appetizers; manicotti, braised crab-stuffed calamari and chicken cacciatore for the main entrées; and pizzelles, chocolate-covered strawberries and profiteroles for dessert. 

Five of the students also read their original work published in the collection:

• Victoria Harrigan, “Food as Memories.”
• Ellie Webb, BA English ’24, “Matryoshka”
• Michael Emmert, “Polka”
• Ben Roe, “The Grape Tomato Tastes Like Divorce”
• Beck Schneider, “Some Food for Thought (Set it Underneath the Table)”