Someone You Should Know: Josh Camp Brown A Southern Fellow

You can find him walking across campus, scruffy-bearded and bespectacled, eating in the dining hall with his family or crafting bluegrass-influenced poetry in the library, but you might not know who he is. Every year, the Academy honors a writer with the George Bennett Fellowship, a year-long residency, and this year, the fellowship was awarded to Josh Camp Brown, a budding poet and remarkable mandolin player.

Brown, a writer from Arkansas, has no formal responsibilities. While he doesn’t officially teach or mentor, students and teachers are free to approach him for literary input as the Bennett Fellow. The purpose of the residency is for Brown to focus completely on his writing.

“There are not that many chances I would have in my life, especially as a poet, to do nothing but write,” Brown said. “Fiction writers and novelists to a certain extent can have that kind of living, but poets do not make much, do not sell a lot of books, so this might be my only chance to consider myself a writer and nothing else besides that.”

To qualify for the fellowship, Brown was asked to send in 20 pages of his work and a “letter of intent.” Although there were over 300 applicants for the highly selective position, Brown was chosen for his unconventional yet fascinating form of poetry.

“An aspect of his work that stuck with me as our committee was making its selection last year was how compellingly—and originally—music sits at the center of his work,” English instructor Ralph Sneeden said. “There is unmistakable music abiding and propelling his language—the poetry itself; but it’s about instruments and music, too. I was hooked.”

Other members of the selection committee, as well as other faculty members, were impressed and excited about Brown and his work.

“I have the highest opinion possible. He is a wonderful, exciting young poet at the beginning of a bright career,” English instructor Todd Hearon, the chair of the selection committee, said. “Having a working writer on campus is a benefit in itself. Aside from writing, Josh has visited and taught classes and been a great departmental colleague.”

In addition to class work and academics, Brown has involved himself in the Exeter community and has been a presence across campus.

“Josh has been lots of fun to have around.  He is a fellow Southerner, and it’s been nice to hear the accent.  He has taught a number of classes and gotten to know many of the students,” English instructor Duncan Holcomb said. “He delivered a great meditation in the winter.  He has played lots of traditional music with some of us in the department, and with various students, including recently at the Democracy of Sound event.”

While at the Academy, Brown has impacted much of the Exeter community with his geniality and knack for poetry, but his time here has also affected his writing in ways he never could have imagined.

“I have gotten a lot of good writing that has been picked up by literary journals, and I am more proud of my material this year than anything I have ever written,” Brown said. “This feels like the best year of my life, and I have found my voice in a better way, so it has been fantastic.”

After long hours in his fourth-floor library office, he even managed to complete his foremost project, a book of bluegrass-infused verse.

“I finished a manuscript of poetry that was about bluegrass music and cultural appropriations that wove us together to create music, including blues, jazz, and singing,” Brown said. “It has all been about that, what created this musical art form that is bluegrass.”

Not only does he write about music, but Brown also expresses himself through his work as an impressive instrumentalist.

“Besides being a wonderful poet and a resource of inspiration and ideas, he's a virtuoso bluegrass mandolin player. Quite the bonus in my book,” Hearon said. “We have been playing a lot of music together.”

Sneeden added, “He is a monster mandolin player with a scary repertoire of bluegrass tunes.”

Even though Brown was quick to blend into the Exeter community, he faced a tough transition after leaving a former teaching position.

"For the past four years I was a graduate instructor, with 100 students a semester,” Brown said. “So in a way this is a lonely fellowship – I am isolated on the fourth floor – but it has been incredibly productive for those reasons. I have not had much to do except bang my head on the manuscript.”

With time, being surrounded by the Exeter environment even made it easier for Brown. “I have never been the kind that has much school spirit, but there is something about this place that gets to you. I have started caring a bit about [the] school, [by] going to games and being around students.”

After exploring the library and picking through primary sources, Brown commenced on his second project of the fellowship.

“I began writing another manuscript, and I am trying to make it into a novel,” Brown said. “I am writing about the first black US Marshal, Bass Reeves, who was raised in my hometown, Portsmouth, Arkansas, and I happened across a biography in the library that has really got me interested.”

Brown continued, noting the ways the Class of 1945 Library has influenced his works.

“The facilities in the library have been fantastic. Here I have found all sorts of materials that have been really inspiring for me,” Brown said. “I have had so much time to explore, I am reading things that really surprise me, like mythic west novels and cartography that I would have never gotten into otherwise.”

While this year has yielded some of the most fruitful and impressive compositions from Brown, his position as the Bennett Fellow is drawing to a close. Looking to the future, Brown is scouting out teaching positions that will suit him best.

“I hope to get back into teaching maybe at another boarding school. I want to get back into the classroom at a high school or college, since I have missed having students – they are so inspiring,” he said. “Getting in front of a class, committing to scholarship and having your ideas cement a class help me write and create.”

Until then, Brown is exploring options for the publication of his works and is enjoying the final days of the fellowship.

“I would like to express gratitude to the faculty, the administration and the students. This has been such a fun experience and a great opportunity to improve my writing, and I could not have done it without the generosity of all the souls of Exeter that let me have this position,” Brown said. “The most important thing for me as far as my academic and writing career has been this book I am working on. Since the fellowship has given me time to finish, it has been the most valuable thing that could have happened to me.”

All in all, Brown has credited the fellowship as an opportunity to explore his love for writing in a deeper and more concentrated way.

“Here I am just a writer, not a teacher or editor,” Brown said. “I am a writer."