Student: Blake Rose

Blake Rose can literally fill notebooks with lyrics, poems and stories.

His love for words goes back to high school, when he started writing lyrics for songs he played on guitar.

Blake Rose takes a break outside on campus.

“I was really into music and playing guitar. I still am, but now I’m not so enamored with the prospects of being some famous rock star. I penned my first lyrics then. They were the worst,” Rose said. “I like to look back at that old stuff though, to be proud about how far I have come.”

Rose is a junior majoring in English with minors in linguistics and creative writing at East Carolina University. He also is becoming certified to teach English as a second language.

As a teenager, he labeled everything he wrote as lyrics, even though they were poems and stories, he said.

“I did the music thing for a few years, but while everyone talked about the guitarists or drummers, I found myself irrevocably drawn to the singers. I liked their lyrics,” Rose said. “When you find a good lyricist, you know you’ve struck gold.”

He took an etymology class and thought he had found his career. But when people kept asking if he was going to study insects, he decided to drop etymology and pursue linguistics. “I decided that linguist was a close enough term, as far as meaning goes, to etymologist. The same way a square is technically a rectangle.”

He didn’t fully embrace his passion until he began taking creative writing courses. “This is also when I realized two things: I had effectively been practicing the art of creative writing for years and that language is my love language,” he said.

Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, Rose and his wife Tiffany moved to Greenville after his father and stepmother — Scott and Marlena Rose, who both work at ECU — suggested he consider ECU.

Before that, he attended Pellissippi State Community College in Tennessee, where he was active in the creative writing club. He became licensed as a certified nursing assistant and worked in nursing homes and in-home care. In addition to his classes at ECU, he is employed by a health care company and works with children who are at risk or on the autism spectrum in their homes.

“This has given me a great insight to humanity and compassion,” Rose said. “I also set out to help the environment in any way possible. All I can do by myself are small things but every little bit counts. I try to spread my love of Earth, and my disappointment of our treatment of her through my poetry.”

Blake Rose visits Wildwood Park, which recently opened in Greenville. Rose advocates for a healthy environment. (Contributed photo)

He picks up litter and adopts trees that are set to be cut. “That is how I developed my passion for bonsai trees and making their pots out of upcycled materials. At this point I have enough trees to open a bonsai rescue center.”

On campus, Rose recently founded the ECU Creative Writing Club. “It will be a safe place for the creative writing community to grow with like-minded individuals,” he said, adding to email him if interested. “There will be writing games, prompts and workshops. How great would it be to have guest speakers and throw publishing parties if one of us gets accepted into a journal?”

His writing has been published in several literary magazines and journals, and he was a finalist for the 2020 Adelaide Literary Award. He has written a novel, drafted another, and has written about 10 short stories and an untold number of poems while in Greenville.

Following graduation in 2023, Rose said he would like to travel, which is one reason for getting his teaching certificate. He also may attend graduate school.

“My wife and I will go wherever our careers beckon us,” he said. “My hope is that we can find somewhere where we are both happy in our fields and can make enough money to live comfortably in our own house. I want a library because my thousands of books must go somewhere. We both want a greenhouse; my trees need a home too, after all.”

What is something cool about ECU that you wish you knew during your first year? The rare books and manuscripts room is one of the most, if not the most, awe-inspiring rooms on campus.