Christine Hume's college roommate at Penn State was an
English major interested in writing fiction, and required
to take a poetry course as part of her degree program.
Terrified by the "other" genre, she convinced Hume, an
art history major at the time, to take the class with her.
"At the time, I didn't even know that poetry was being
written anymore," Hume recalled. "I took the class and
I had this conversion experience. It was life-changing."
 |
POETRY READING: Christine Hume (standing),
an EMU associate professor of English language and
literature, works with Emily Dobbs, a graduate
student from Canton, in her Creative Writing
and Art
course. Hume was recently recognized
as a
Distinguished Faculty Award winner for
Creative
Activity. |
Hume, an Eastern Michigan University associate professor
of English language and literature as well as an award-winning
poet, pushes beyond the literate into the texture, emotion,
sound and rhythm of words. Her work, particularly in sound
poetry and lyric essay, earned Hume the 2009 Ronald W.
Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Creative Activity.
Asked for her reflections on the award, she offered this:
"I feel electrified by the potencies of that insolvent
thing, a Lightning in the Germ. I feel sustained, infused,
captivated by a cosmic wind's mixed airs. I will live through
its illusion."
The translation? The recognition and support is sustaining,
infusing and electrifying.
"The way poetry works is more akin to a foreign language," said
Hume. "People tend to respond to it the way they respond
to journalism, but that's not the way that poetry works.
It offers a totally 'other' experience, one we don't tend
to get unless we're one of the few (who study it)."
Hume's first book, "Musca Domestica," received the Barnard
New Women Poets Prize. Her second, "Alaskaphrenia," earned
the Green Rose Award and Small Press Traffic's 2005 Best
Book of the Year Award. She's also been published in several
poetry anthologies and respected literary journals.
Hume, who's shared her poetry with audiences from Seattle
to Slovenia, wants you to not only "get" it, but let yourself
enjoy it. She sometimes uses sound recordings to enrich
the experience of hearing a piece of poetry read aloud.
"Unless it's a performance-based work, poems are made
to be read over and over again," Hume said. "(The recordings)
help give context and clues, and help the audience relax
a little more."
Her latest book, "Lullaby: Speculations on the First Active
Sense" (Ugly Duckling Press 2008) uses lyric essay — a
hybrid form that uses poetic devices within an essay structure
— to examine the experience of a lullaby and the idea of
rhythm as a native instinct. The book includes a CD, made
with local composer Mark James, with a composition of found
sounds integrated with acoustic guitar. The environmental
sounds, such as rain and footsteps, are absorbed into the
music in a composition that's meant to give the reader
a deeper, more nuanced sense of the work.
 |
POETRY READING: Professor Christine Hume
and
Brad
Wozniak, a Livonia senior, discuss poetry in
Hume's
Creative Writing and Art class. |
In addition to teaching classes in poetry, hybrid genres
and contemporary forms, Hume coordinates EMU's Creative
Writing program and plays a key role in its extracurricular
branches. She's the faculty adviser for Bathhouse Hypermedia
Journal, a literary Web journal that highlights the work
of creative writing students and graduates, and co-director
of Bathhouse Events, a reading series that brings five
to a dozen contemporary writers, editors and artists to
campus each year.
"We emphasize more experimental and innovative works,
and ways of looking at writing," Hume said. "To be able
to bring in people who are practicing in that world helps
quite a bit. It gives students kind of an immediate contact
high."
The "Bathhouse" name draws on Ypsilanti's history as a
place where people would come to "take in the waters" and
to the buried stream that runs under campus and occasionally
floods the basement of Mark Jefferson. Linguistically,
both the idea of contagion and the metaphor of a buried
stream were just too rich to resist.
"(The creative writing program) is a unique program that's
really interdisciplinary," said Rebecca Sipe, head of EMU's
Department of English Language and Literature. "Christine
does a great deal of work coordinating with other departments
in addition to maintaining an incredibly aggressive publication
record for herself."
Hume was born into a military family in Alaska and had
lived in 16 different places before she came to EMU in
2001. Ever the new kid, she learned to pay close attention
to the nuances of language and behavior, and it shaped
the way she saw the world.
The eight years she's lived in Ypsilanti are by far the
longest she's stayed in one place.
"For better and for worse, I feel like I have a restlessness,
both linguistically and also physically," she said. "Even
after I stopped having to move around, every couple of
years I'd find a reason to move.
...Primarily the reason I've stayed here is I really
love my job. The program I teach in is totally unique in
the country, and I wouldn't be able to do the things I
do anywhere else."
