BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – When Mark Yakich entered Illinois Wesleyan in 1988, he never imagined becoming an award-winning poet with four published books and another on the way. The political science major, who later earned multiple graduate degrees and is currently an associate professor of English at Loyola University, New Orleans, did not enjoy English studies and notes that he only read two novels — Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye — before age 25.
Yakich is a multi-focused artist who, according to Susan Larson of The Times-Picayune, “makes the reader re-evaluate what a word can do, what a word can mean, even what history as we know it is all about.” Here, Yakich explains via e-mail Illinois Wesleyan’s integral role in his winding path to poetry and how he became an actor, of sorts.
When you were selecting your undergraduate university, what drew you to Illinois Wesleyan?
My mother drew me to IWU. Mom didn’t want me to go far away from home, so it was either the University of Illinois or Illinois Wesleyan. I believe she liked the brochure we got in the mail. We took a visit to IWU, a day trip, and I thought it was nice and not too big. I liked the idea of a small, liberal arts university and I didn’t want to be a number [like I could have been] at the University of Illinois even though I had a small plan to go there to major in architecture. I still love architecture and have kept many of the drawings I did of cotter pins, flywheels and one of a fireplace inlaid with black marble and bordered by stained glass in a tool chest in my closet for many years.