Dr. Ashley Bender: TWU’s Poet-Professor

North Texas is home to many wonderful institutes of higher learning. That means North Texas is home to many wonderful professors. Madeworthy has featured several professors in our pages over the years, and two of our regular contributors are professors at local universities.

Every year, we devote an issue to education and learning of all kinds, while another issue is all about the arts in our city. Those two issues have been constants since we started publishing. So we thought, “What if we combined them? What if we find a professor who’s a poet?”

May we introduce Dr. Ashley Bender?

Dr. Bender is an assistant professor of English at Texas Women’s University in Denton. She also coordinates the Bachelor of Arts program in English and the First Year Experience program. She is the mother of six-year-old twins and volunteers at Denton’s community radio station, KUZU 92.9 FM. An avid poetry reader and occasional poetry author, Dr. Bender spends a lot of time reading and thinking about female authors of centuries past, especially of the eighteenth century. She generously shared one of her poems with us.

Circle Games

Chasing you in circles, den, kitchen, hallway,
den kitchen hallway denkitchenhallway
movement, blurred to tight humming harmony
squeals, exuberant echoes round and round and round
I want, need this euphoria to remain
this moment, torrent, to hold this feeling,
aching, exquisite, ephemeral
in my hands, my mouth, my mind
knowing I must write, send it to you
scared I will forget, so I give up, give in,
panting, pause the game, seizing seconds
to write, capture, savor, until
you come back to me,

come back to me,

Mommy, are you ready to do it?
and I am again and again and again
circle games for as long as you let me play.

Young black boys polaying in their new house