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Senior Andrea Amulic tours Connecticut with winning poetry

Andrea Amulic '12 is one of five student poets selected to the Connecticut Poetry Circuit Tour, a prestigious annual contest that highlights the poetry of exceptional students from colleges across Connecticut. The winning poets have their work published in the Connecticut Review and travel together to give a series of poetry readings across the state. The tour came to Connecticut College on Feb. 24.

"I have really enjoyed visiting other colleges and universities and meeting students and professors who are excited about poetry," Amulic said. "Reading my work to an audience has definitely helped me become more comfortable with public speaking and has allowed me to examine my poems in a new way, namely with an interest in the quality of their sound."

As part of her application for the Connecticut Poetry Circuit Tour, Amulic submitted four poems that she had written in the early fall as part of her senior thesis, a collection of original poems.

"These poems, as well as the rest of the poems in my thesis, were inspired primarily by the summer I spent in Croatia and by my personal heritage," she said. "I am from the former Yugoslavia, and much of my writing is inspired by my having been born in a country that has since been partitioned. My poems, therefore, are usually explorations of identity at both personal and cultural levels."

Amulic, a double major in psychology and English with a concentration in creative writing, was first alerted to the Connecticut Poetry Circuit Tour by English Professor Charles Hartman, the College's poet in residence. Over the course of Amulic's four years at Connecticut College, she has developed a strong working relationship with Hartman, who serves as adviser for both her literatures in English major and her senior thesis. Though she is not entirely sure how her interest in poetry originated, Amulic reckons it is in some way connected to her fondness for children's poet Shel Silverstein.

"I do know that I became interested in writing, language and wordplay after reading "The Phantom Tollbooth" in grade school," she said.

During her time at Connecticut College, Amulic, a scholar in the College's Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts, has spent a semester in Milan and completed a College-funded summer internship in Zagreb. On campus, she writes for the College's weekly student newspaper, is on the English Student Advisory Board, plays club soccer and will perform in this year's production of "The Vagina Monologues."

Following Commencement 2013 in May, she hopes to pursue a career in a communications-related field, such as publishing, journalism, marketing or advertising. "I love that Conn is such a small, close-knit community and I am really grateful for all of the people I have met here," Amulic said. "I have also really enjoyed all of the classes I've taken; I like that classes are typically small and that professors are really involved with their students." - By Laura Marenghi '12



February 27, 2012