Each day as students, faculty and staff stream into Pasteur Hall—the only building on Bellarmine’s campus when it opened in 1950—many stop at the Pasteur Hall Express area, where a man with dark hair, mustache and glasses, popularly known as “Mister Terry,” sells grab-and-go food and drink.
Terry Yates is an affable, witty person given to wry humor and pithy philosophical snippets—in short, an ideal counter guy for busy people in a university setting. But what most of the university community probably doesn’t know is that Mister Terry is also a poet who has published one volume of his writings and is working on another.
His first volume of poetry, Sojourn on a River (Goshen, KY, Pennington Press) was published in 2022. On the back cover of Sojourn, a collection of 53 poems, he said, “On Thanksgiving 2018, my wife of 37 years suggested a project. To take all those pages in the back filing cabinet and make a book.” By Christmas, Yates had produced spiral-bound copies of his poems as gifts for his two sons.
To create his verses, he said, “things occur to me, and I write them down—that’s how I’m wired.” He started writing at 15. “I didn’t find poetry; it found me,” he said. His major writing influences are Bob Dylan, William Butler Yeats and, locally, Lee Pennington.
The production of the original draft was painstaking, Yates said. “I’m not the best typist—I use one finger strictly. Not one finger on each hand: only one finger. I just can’t use two hands.”
A chance meeting with Pennington, a past Kentucky Poet Laureate under whom Yates studied at Jefferson Community College, led him to engage artist Jill Baker to illustrate the work and to connect with the eventual publisher.
His poems are sometimes quirky and always thought-provoking. For example, “First Impression”:
When the artist is compelled
Mary Kennedy, director of catering for Sodexo at Bellarmine, is Yates’ sister. “Reading poetry from Sojourn on a River is like listening to my brother tell me a story,” she said, “but hearing him recite one of his entries is like a Bob Dylan song lyric, complete with the nasal accent, or an e e cummings poem, brief, clear, and full of imagery.”
Growing up in Okolona, Yates graduated from Southern High School—he was there at the same time as Phil Simms, future Super Bowl MVP—and went into retail business. He operated Electric Shaver Sales and Service next to the old Vogue Theatre in St. Matthews for 25 years. “Every year I was there,” he recalled, “the shop earned more money than the year before—until 2000, when it tapered off before nosediving due to internet competition.”
Twelve years ago, he appeared on campus for the first time. “I was working for a temporary agency, and there was a temp job for a dinner at Hilary’s,” he said. “I was pushing a cart through Café Ogle thinking this is where I need to work! It was like a revelation.”He was a busy barista at Einstein Bagels in Centro before taking over “Tom’s Cart” when longtime worker Tom O’Bryan retired.
“It’s the perfect job for me at this time in my life,” Yates said. Monday through Thursday, he arrives at Bellarmine at 6 a.m. and is on sales duty from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. “It’s a convenience for students and faculty who just want a snack or lunch,” he said. Yates also tends bar in the Knights Hall lobby at BU basketball games.
His student interactions brighten his day, and theirs. Senior Jada Harris stopped by one morning and asked how Yates was doing. “Semi-magnificent,” he replied. “Even if I’m just walking by, Terry and I will talk,” she said.
Junior Brando Medina said he chats with Yates “all the time.”
“I like his personality,” Brando said. “Every time I come in, he’s the first person I see, and he gives a good start to my day.”
Yates is working on his second book, THESE THINGS HAPPEN. “Every time I think it’s done, I add more to it,” he said.
Supporting his poetry efforts are his wife, Tamy, and his two sons, who he says are his best critics. “It could be ‘Out of the park, dad,’ or ‘This is a miss.’ My wife said I’m only working here to tell jokes to the students.”
Sojourn on a River is available on Amazon.