A poet and a teacher

Brendan Allen 

Trine University - Jannen School of Arts & Sciences
M.F.A. Temple University in Creative Writing, M.A. University of Maine in English
260.665.4342  |  email

As a poet and professor of writing, I am always curious about the ways in which our social environments inform our potentials for communication: How and why do we choose to represent ourselves in language? Who do we hope will recognize our words? I believe that effective writing is always dependent on context: The methods through which we competently write in one scenario—say, for example, in a biographical statement on a faculty webpage—can often look wildly out of place when applied to a different task and read by a different audience. In the classroom, my students and I work together to untangle these complex webs of social influence while developing flexible and adaptive writing strategies. 

I'm proud to serve as the faculty advisor for The Writers' Block, a student-run literary journal established in 2022. Before joining Trine University as an assistant professor in 2021, I completed an MFA in poetry at Temple University, fell in love with long walks around South Philadelphia, and began developing a choose-your-own-adventure, poetry-generating video game titled Centoquest. I also hold an MA in English from the University of Maine, where I co-founded an interdisciplinary performance series called The Happenings Series. Over the last decade I’ve traveled widely around the United States, but I originally hail from Kansas. It's a warm pleasure to return to the Midwest as a professor at Trine.