Isaac Hamill: The Poetics of the Newspaper

By: Morgan Sherburne and Jennifer Brink

Working for a newspaper:

Producing a paper every day takes a lot of work and a lot of stress. Isaac Hamill, assistant sports editor for a west Michigan newspaper, knows this, but he also knows that this is most rewarding aspect of his job. Every evening, he can hold a finished newspaper in his hands that didn’t quite exist that morning.

This, Hamill says, is where working for a newspaper differs from college. Every day has a specific focus; every day has a specific goal. You arrive in the morning with an aim; you leave with a newspaper.

Hamill earned his bachelor of arts in English from the University of Tennessee, then went on to begin his MFA in Maryland. There he didn’t feel that he had a specific goal—he didn’t know why he was at graduate school. He quit after three semesters and began working at the Baltimore Times, answering telephones. Having a degree already, he was a bit overqualified to that, and was soon promoted to the sports department and worked as a copyeditor.

After the Baltimore Times, Hamill continued his career in the newspaper business at various newspapers in Kentucky, where Helen Mendursa, his wife, finished her Ph. D. When Mendursa found a job as a professor at Hope College, Hamill applied to a west Michigan newspaper.
As a sports editor for the newspaper, Hamill mostly delegates writing assignments to staff writers. The sports section is mostly driven by the season: during fall, most of the articles are about football; during winter, most of the articles are about basketball. The articles are also driven daily by which games are of interest to the area. The day before a Detroit Lions game, the article could be about various things—the Lions’ game plan, or a specific player.

Writing for a newspaper:

Though he mostly designates assignments to his staff, Hamill writes as well. Each article Hamill writes he makes as clean as possible before he sends to the copy desk. There, it is edited for content, style, and finally grammar. The length of newspaper articles is talked about in inches, and, if needed, the content is altered in order to allow for length. “If an article is especially good, something else might get cut in order for it to fit; you have to make it fit.”

The articles are written at the seventh-grade reading level; Hamill says it’s a fine balance between specialized subjects, but specialized subjects for the general public. The articles need to be explained well, but not dumbed down; they need to be clear, but not condescending.

“Newspapers,” Hamill said, “err on the side of being too simplistic. They underestimate their audience. Most newspaper readers are literate people, interested in reading about current issues.” He says that the newspaper world—like a lot of areas in our world—has become too corporate, too caught up with making information accessible; instead, it makes the information too simplistic. “The editorial process is too strict,” Hamill said. “I think our investigative reporting could be a little more cutting-edge.”

However, it is a job he likes—product-oriented, goal-driven—but it is a job that is exhausting. The eight to ten hour days leave little time for him to pursue his primary interest: creative writing. He is a poet—though he might argue that he hasn’t quite earned that label yet—and has completed a screenplay.

There is also family life to throw into the mix—he and Mendursa have two children—which further narrows his time: “Some nights, I don’t sleep very much,” said Hamill, of trying to work in all the various aspects of his life.

He has been able to marry his two fields occasionally. Once, he wrote an editorial about his roots: he was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and grew up in Alabama. The editorial detailed how Alabama resembled Michigan, and why both states feel like home. That editorial is about as close to creative writing as it gets in a newspaper.

Writing for himself:

Hamill does not focus on the two fields--creative and professional writing--being simply mutually exclusive. His journalistic writing informs his creative writing. “The problem with some poetry,” said Hamill, “is that poets are so focused on themselves that their end product suffers. Journalism makes you see the world. It gives you a sense of audience and offers you a place in history.”
But occasionally, the intrinsic trapping of writing for a newspaper frustrates Hamill. “You have to spell everything out. [In poetry], you use metaphor and image to give meaning.” In newspaper-writing, you just can’t do that.

Feeling a need for a structured creative-writing environment, Hamill returned to school. More than ten years after he began working in newspapers, he felt he had a better idea of what he wanted to work for in graduate school.

He is currently working towards a Masters of Fine Arts in poetry from Western Michigan University. So in addition to family, a full-time job, and working on a screenplay, Hamill commutes once or sometimes twice a week to Western’s campus in Kalamazoo.
There, he writes under the guidance of two of his mentors—the poetry professors Nancy Eimers and William Olsen. Because Hamill is rarely on campus, he doesn’t feel quite immersed in a creative-writing environment.

Ideally, Hamill would like to sell two to three screenplays a year and spend the rest of his time writing poetry. “Poetry is what I really want to do,” he said. “I have no illusions. I don’t want to sell my screenplay to an independent producer for fifty dollars.”

Still, he finds time for both his creative and his professional writing. “It’s always a challenge,” Hamill said. “A fiction professor once told me that life won’t make a place for you to write. If it’s important, you’ll make a space for it.” Just as an editor cuts room into the front page of a newspaper for a fine piece of journalism, so Isaac Hamill has to shape the many facets of his life to fit his poetry into it.