Meet Waffle House’s Poet Laureate. She’s Touring Georgia High Schools to Promote College Access.

Karen Head often wakes up thinking she’s in someone else’s life.

The associate professor and poet at the Georgia Institute of Technology didn’t go to college until she was 27. Neither of Head’s parents graduated from high school, though both later got high-school equivalency diplomas. Higher education, for her, was never a foregone conclusion.

That changed when she enrolled at DeKalb College, taking classes at night. Her professors urged her to think big, and she did — earning four degrees in 11 years. Homesick in graduate school at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, she would drive hours to the nearest Waffle House for a taste of the familiar. Today, she is an associate professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and leads Georgia Tech’s Communication Center, which specializes in tutoring and writing. So that is-this-really-my-life feeling? “That’s a privilege,” she says, “and with privilege comes responsibility.”

Head was recently named Waffle House’s first poet laureate, and has begun a tour of 12 Georgia schools. At each school, she talks about poetry – knowing that arts education is cut in high schools with tight budgets – and going to college. (The restaurant is covering travel expenses — its CEO is a Georgia Tech alumnus.)

Head spoke with The Chronicle about her conversations in high schools, integrating poetry into her academic career, and, of course, her love of Waffle House.

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What’s your pitch to the teachers and principals to set up your visits?

I say, this is a twofold thing. I want to come and give a reading. Hopefully, we can work this with your English teachers, and curricularly, I would like it to work. For many of these students, they’ve never seen an artist. It’s like, that’s a bunch of dead people. I want them to understand that it’s not. Then, it’s the personal story, which I weave into it. I’m hoping I will make them think about – even if it’s a year or two of college, what a difference that could make in their life.

I answer questions, if students have them, about Georgia Tech. But Georgia Tech isn’t the right answer for most students. I want them to think about our eCore program in the state. It’s everything distance learning should be. And again, access can still be a problem. Because some of these students don’t have the internet access that we like to believe.

People have to find the right options for them.

Are you hoping that by being open about your path to college, that will serve as an example to these students?

Yes, it’s that. It’s, Find your way to do this. Sometimes that takes extra time. It took me to 27. I was terrified that first quarter. I just remember when I was registering for class at community college. They said, “How many classes do you think you can manage?” And I said, “Only one.” I took a speech class because, I figured, I know how to talk. By the second quarter, I was ready to take two classes. But it was absolutely terrifying.

I went at night. I didn’t have to tell people I was working with. I didn’t think going into it that I would be successful. I thought, “I’m going to try this, but I have a feeling this isn’t going to work.” It was the faculty at that community college who wouldn’t let me give up. It was difficult, when you have a life and a mortgage to pay and a job all day. You get in your car and you drive for almost an hour to get to college. You take your class, and it’s late by the time you finish. You’re eating a McDonald’s hamburger in the car because that’s all you have time for. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Is it hard to open up to classrooms of high-school students again and again?

Ninth graders are judgmental in the way that ninth graders are – like, really, you’re wearing that shirt? But they’re not judgmental about the things that are really substantive and important. They are incredibly open and accepting. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t tell the story.

You can’t single out anyone. I usually say, “Do any of you know someone that doesn’t think college is right for them?” Invariably, every hand will go up. Whether they mean themselves or someone else doesn’t matter. At that point, they’re listening.

It’s about storytelling, too. Which is where I leverage being a creative writer. This is how I’ve always taught. People don’t remember data, people remember stories. People will listen to stories. And I wear my Waffle House name tag. They always want to ask about that. I leverage that as well. They always want to know do I get free waffles.

What’s the answer to that?

I do not get free food from Waffle House. Unless I happen to be lucky enough to stumble in at the same time the CEO is there and he buys me lunch.

I’ve read that Waffle House in some ways was a familiar, homey place for you, especially in graduate school. Tell me more about that feeling and how you feel it connects you to some of the people you’re meeting on tour.

There’s something very basic about Waffle House. Waffle House is always the same. Food is one of my great joys in life. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around the world and go to amazing restaurants, Michelin-star restaurants. But sometimes what you need is just a really solid breakfast.

Waffle House is, in many ways, Southern-ish. Even though I grew up in the Army, and we lived all over the place, I grew up in a very Southern home. My mother is very Southern. She cooked very Southern food. Some of which I liked and some of which I didn’t.

We weren’t wealthy. My father’s favorite thing is beans and corn bread. And every Monday of my life, and by extension every Tuesday of my life, we had beans and corn bread. Some Mondays it was pinto beans, and some Mondays it was navy beans, and maybe somebody was coming for a visit and we might mix the two together for something fancy.

The students who you’ve met so far on tour must know Waffle House, and I’m curious if you can connect with them because of those similar experiences and the feelings that you described.

People have notions about what it is to be a college professor. Waffle House is another way to enter into a conversation. It’s something they understand, and if I want to communicate anything to them, I have to gain their trust, and I have to gain it very quickly, because I’m there for a day. You have to meet people where you are. That’s ground zero for being a tutor. That’s what you learn when you do writing-center work. You have to make a connection, and you have to make it quick. The fact that I’m not some fancy professor from Atlanta – and maybe I am that, too – the Waffle House thing makes me more relatable.

How does the study and practice of poetry integrate into the rest of your academic life?

There are two things. One is: Students hate poetry. We give the wrong poetry early in their lives. I remember being in high school and thinking, “I’m sorry, what?” And we still do that.

Poetry is difficult, and a lot of people think that there’s some secret formula. They’re also often taught – just the way curricula evolves – that there is a single interpretation. That’s not true. I let them own it. Sometimes they see things that I didn’t intend but are totally there. When they hear me say that, they’re like, “Oh, so we really can have our interpretation.”

The other thing about being a poet: I studied with Ted Kooser when I was at Nebraska. Ted always talked about the incongruous detail. It’s the poet’s job to see the thing, to find the thing, to call attention to the thing that’s sticking out, but maybe everybody else is walking past. And this is why I often can find the thread when I meet someone, when I meet a stranger. I have an incredibly good eye for the thing that other people don’t pay attention to. It’s right there.

Do you use that skill when speaking to students who no one has asked about college before?

Yes. In part because I’ll hear something in what they say. Everybody wants to be noticed. Everyone wants to be acknowledged. Everyone wants to be special in some way. And when you can find that, that’s the door into telling them that they need to leverage that. And in leveraging that, that’s what will move them forward, for me. College helps you often find those things about yourself. Often you discover you’re not as strange as you think you are.

What’s your Waffle House order?

It’s pretty much always the same. It’s the cheese and egg plate, raisin toast, hash browns — scattered, smothered, capped, and bacon extra well. I used to get scattered, smothered, covered, but as I’ve gotten older I have to back off somewhere. So I get the cheese on the eggs but not on the hash browns. And I added mushrooms because we know those are always healthy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.