As Blake Mellencamp leads his Writers’ community meeting, the air is completely relaxed and humorous, like friends hanging out. The small group of students tosses around a few ideas from a writing prompt he has just handed out, exploring creative writing styles. After a few people have shared, he reads his own prompt, which gets the whole room laughing. He looks around with an easy grin on his face.
Mellencamp, a Ball State English education major, is a poet, a musician and a general advocate of art. He participates in several artistic communities in the Muncie area like the writer’s community. The bulk of his free time outside of school and his part-time job at the Indiana Academy is spent doing creative writing.
Stylistically, Mellencamp’s writing gravitates less toward strict prose to a more abstract form, thematically and conventionally.
“For a long time, I tried to be big and artistic and edgy, and I just wanted to be like T.S. Eliot and have all these big, fancy allusions,” he said. “But I realized eventually that that’s not me.”
Mellencamp draws influence from the satirical giants of the ’70s. This includes Frank Zappa, Jonathan Richman and Jens Lekman, who he said inspire him to develop a poetic voice that uses humor and word textures to create a distinct feeling.
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