MS Teacher, Student Collaborate on Poetry Book

What began as a fun mental exercise to cope with Austin traffic has blossomed into a full body of published work. Middle School English teacher Scott Jarrett’s collection of poetry, Traffickwocky, published under the pen name Tex MoPac, recently caught the attention of Austin360! SAS student Samantha Rauch ‘20 designed his cover art, and SAS parent Tim O’Brien wrote the foreword. Read his brief interview with us:
What inspired you to write this book? How long did it take?
We moved here from Fort Worth in August of 2015. Although Austin has been fabulous in many ways, the traffic congestion has been, at times, overwhelming. While stuck in traffic, I started to think of some of the people I saw in other cars. So, I started messing around with little poems just to make myself (or my 8th grade classes) try to laugh about the frustration and absurdity of traffic.

How did you decide to collaborate with Samantha?
I had Samantha in class last year and she used to draw cartoons on her quizzes and tests. For example, if we were studying Animal Farm, she'd draw some of the animals. She's a fabulous artist and has a great sense of humor. In the latter part of the year she started a sketch book that she'd take to all of her classes and she'd draw all kinds of things and show us (her teachers). We think she should publish that sketch book at some point.

What sentiment or idea do you hope readers glean?
I hope that anyone who reads them just gets a good laugh out of them. It is sort of amazing how many hours we spend in our car and how many random thoughts we have while driving. Traffic has to rank right up there with one of the more talked-about topics here in Austin...a topic that people like to talk about with derision. As such, maybe Trafficwocky can be slightly therapeutic for them.
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