For each year they attend the College, Bennington students go out into the world to complete seven-week winter internships in areas that fascinate them and complement their studies. They bring back stories from across the country and across the globe—tales from political campaigns and research laboratories, law offices and art museums, hospitals and theaters, newspapers and national parks.

This internship period is called Field Work Term, and it’s been going strong since the College's founding. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be presenting stories from this year’s FWT.

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Rosemary Melia ’09 calls herself a “low-key, nature-loving Oregonian”—and for her first two Field Work Terms, she followed her heart back home to the Pacific Northwest. Her freshman year found her journeying to Washington state, working on a book of historic photographs at a historical society. For her sophomore FWT, she interned at a “radical small press and zine distro” in Portland, OR.

And for a student like Rose—who concentrates in literature and visual arts (including bookmaking), and has a serious interest in social issues—the jobs were ideal. She learned how to run a small press...re-evaluated her politics...soaked up history.

But this year, it was time for a change.

"It is at once respected and subversive, a nexus I’m interested in exploring.”

“I wanted to tackle the big, frightening world of New York City Publishing,” Rose says. And she wanted to do it her way: “on a non-corporate scale, with organizations I could get behind.” She found those organizations in the form of The New York Quarterly and Archipelago Books.

Rose calls the Quarterly “a small but revered poetry magazine [with] a history of publishing poems other magazines won’t....It is at once respected and subversive, a nexus I’m interested in exploring.”

Her duties ranged from reading submissions to updating the website, but in addition to seeing the workings of a small magazine, there was a whole other dimension to the internship.

“Raymond [Hammond], the editor, also gave me reading assignments, and we would discuss Proust, Rilke, etc. as part of the job,” Rose says. “I loved the informality of the work environment at NYQ. After a frenzy of reading submissions, Raymond would call for a break, and we would sit at the kitchen table and talk about the voice of the magazine.”

“One of the perks of the job was free books.”

Rose was equally at home at Archipelago, a not-for-profit press that publishes world literature in translation. (Fun fact: It’s also housed in a renovated can factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn.) “I deeply respect what Archipelago Books does,” Rose says. “So much of the literature available in the United States also comes from the United States, which seems ridiculous when there are so many great writers, dead and contemporary, from around the world whose work we ought to know.”

Lofty visions are supported by attention to logistics; much of Rose’s work included office tasks like fielding submissions and copyediting manuscripts. But she also supported Archipelago’s vision of “artistic exchange between cultures” by organizing book tours for its authors—something she had never done before.

“Setting up a book tour is more work than one might imagine,” she says. To arrange the tour for French author Dominique Fabre’s newly translated novel The Waitress Was New, “I had to throw my net pretty wide, contacting as many heads of as many notable French and Creative Writing departments as I could find.” Fortunately, her work was fueled by genuine enthusiasm: “One of the perks of the job was free books,” she says, and because she was able to read Fabre’s novel, “I was excited about it, and really wanted to put together the best tour possible.” Archipelago’s website now features the tour dates that Rose set up.

"They ended up keeping me on as assistant editor—I’ll keep reading submissions and doing website work from Bennington."

Arranging all those details also had some notable side benefits. “I finally conquered, or at least kept at bay, my terror of talking to strangers on the phone,” Rose says. “And if I wanted to book my band now, or work in a PR situation again, I’d know what to do.”

If organizing book tours helped her conquer her fear of the phone, by the end of Field Work Term, she had also conquered her fears of New York. “Everyone associated with the NYQ, and with Archipelago, were so kind to me,” Rose says. “Even though at first I felt pretty out of place [in the city]…the kindness of my employers really helped me get acclimated.”

Which is good news, considering that she’ll be seeing more of them in the future. “At the Quarterly, I learned quite a bit about web and graphic design, but perhaps more importantly, I made great connections. They ended up keeping me on as assistant editor—I’ll keep reading submissions and doing website work from Bennington....it’s a fine opportunity to stay connected to the poetry community.”

More:

• Field Work Term
• More Field Work Term stories
• A sampler of recent FWT jobs

Click here to read more stories about Bennington.