Monica Berlin
Associate Professor of English
General Interests
"Throughout my work runs the notion of inheritance and the weight of responsibility. Many of my poems concern themselves with the idea of taking care of things that don't belong to us, that never belonged to us, and the ways in which we become responsible, tied by our hearts, and want to honor that. I try to make poems where accumulation relies on a kind of lyricism not only on objects that accumulate in expected places, a corner, a flat surface. My poems do not want a gathering dust. Storage too has become uncomfortable to me; the poem isn't now, for me, a vault.
I believe writing depends on thresholds and physically liminal spaces, on being firmly in one place while entering into or seeing another. The house where I live and in which I write is lined with windows and filled with interior doors, each leading to another room or anteroom. This house has become part of my way of thinking about writing, and it mirrors what I aim, in part, to achieve: for the things we make to be seen as their own space while belonging to other places, like the rooms just beyond and then the outdoors, seeping in.
When making poems or essays, when telling stories, I've found myself fascinated by edges-the edges of everything-particularly the threshold of language or that moment where utterance edges toward something new, something different."
Years at Knox: 1998 to present
Education
M.F.A., Poetry, 2002, Vermont College.
M.A., Literature and Composition, 1998, Western Illinois University.
B.A., English Writing, 1995, Knox College.
Teaching Interests
Poetry writing, fiction writing, creative non-fiction, composition, modern and contemporary American literature
Recent Recognition
Awards
The Thomas R. Hruska Memorial Nonfiction Prize for "The Eighteenth Week," Passages North, April 2009.
Pushcart Nominations for "Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live" and "Counted Among the Missing," 2009.
Pushcart Nominations for "After Settling" and "If Only Disappearing," 2008.
Young Alumni Achievement Award, Knox College, 2007.
Pushcart Nomination for "Attached to Hands," 2007.
Finalist, Arts & Letters Prize in Poetry, 2005.
Finalist Award, Illinois Arts Council, 2005.
Pushcart Nominations for "About the Nurse in Ob-Gyn," "Updike Arrives in Peoria, the City of Vowels," "The Alphabet," and "Rome, Winter 1967," 2004.
Pushcart Nomination for "Some Kind of Helen," 2003.
Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, 2003.
Finalist, The Missouri Review's Larry Levis Prize, 2002.
Third Place, Glimmer Train's Poetry Open, for "A Sort of Excavation," 2002.
Finalist, The Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, for "First Poem for the Disappearing," 2000.
Recent Accomplishments
Publications
"The Eighteenth Week." Passages North, forthcoming.
"Measure By Hand." New Orleans Review 34.2 (2009).
"Triple Elegy." Rhino (2009).
"Another Ice Age." Tammy (2009).
"What My Body Did" & "If Only Disappearing." Fourteen Hills 15.1 (2008).
"Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live." Diagram 8.4 (2008).
"Review of Marianne Boruch's Grace, Fallen from." Black Warrior Review (2008).
"Counted Among the Missing." After Hours 16.1 (2008).
"No Blues for Architecture." Midway 4.1 (2007).
"Studies in Modern and Contemporary Fiction: Carole Maso's AVA." Dalkey Archive Press, 2002, 2007.
"After Settling," "Another Disappearing" and "If Only Disappearing." Dislocate 3.1 (2007).
"Attached to Hands." Third Coast (2006).
"Fungus Considered." Manthology: Poems of the Male Experience. University of Iowa Press (2006).
"Abroad,"Untitled:" and "Duo." Horseless Review (2006).
"All Our Secrets Are The Same," Profession (2005).
"What the Doctor Forgot." Artful Dodge 44/45 (2004).
"Fungus Considered." Flyway 8.1 (2003).
"About the Nurse in Ob-Gyn," "Updike Arrives in Peoria, the City of Vowels," "The Alphabet" and "Rome, Winter 1967." The Missouri Review 26.1 (2003).
"Some Kind of Helen." The Southern Indiana Review 9.1 (2002).
"First Poem for the Disappearing." The Comstock Review 14.2 (2000).
Presentations
"All Our Secrets Are the Same: Some Thoughts on Teaching, Eavesdropping and Poetry." Fridays at Four, Knox College, 2004 and Vermont College, 2002.
"Strange the way the joy keeps changing’: Re-reading and Re-Creating AVA’s Desire" presented as part of Panel entitled "Languages and Literacies of Desire in the Novels of Carole Maso" at the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, 2002.
Readings at Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City, 2006; Alumni Caxton Club, 2003; Caxton Club, 2002; Vermont College, 2002; Bradley University, 2001.
"Learn to Love the Spaces Between: Teaching The Silence of Carole Maso" presented as part of Panel entitled "Disruptive Texts, Sexualities, And Classrooms: The Novels of Carole Maso" at the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, 2001.
"Rupture, Verge, and Precipice:" presented as part of Panel entitled "Teaching Matters: Approaches to Teaching Carole Maso’s Novels," at the National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2000.
Campus & Community Involvement
Faculty Advisor, The Common Room
Faculty Advisor, Cellar Door
Proprietor, The Weekly Poem, an on-line literary newsletter.
Contributing Editor, Hunger Mountain, The Vermont College Journal of Arts & Letters.
Assistant Poetry Editor, Fifth Wednesday Journal.
Reader/Reviewer, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and Modern Fiction Studies.
What Students Say
"Monica Berlin is one of the most subtly incisive writing professors I have ever encountered. Her ability to feel the problematics in her students' work and then guide them into verbalizing and understanding them is uncanny. She teaches others to hear and understand the elusive mechanics of writing. Her guidance has greatly enriched the quality of my work, my ability to understand and speak of poetry, and my faith in this form."
-Maggie Queeney, Creative Writing and Classics Major
Contact
309-341-7195
mberlin@knox.edu