Years at Knox: 1997 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 fiction, Faulkner.
Professional 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.
"Over the last years I've also been working on a collection of critical essays about contemporary poetry and fiction, and about teaching creative writing. In the process 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." Recent Scholarly Achievements
Publications
Recognitions
Awards
Presentations
Involvement Publications
"No Blues for Architecture." Midway, Summer 2007. "Attached to Hands." Third Coast, 54-55, 2006. "Fungus Considered." Manthology, eds. Roger Weingarten, Kate Fetherston, Craig Crist-Evans. University of Iowa Press, 10-12, 2006. "Abroad." "Untitled:." "Duo." Horseless Review, 2006. "All Our Secrets Are The Same," Profession 2005. 92-101, 2005. "Fungus Considered," poem, in Manthology: Poems of the Male Experience. University of Iowa Press, 2006. "What the Doctor Forgot." The Artful Dodge 44/45: 146, Summer 2004. "Fungus Considered." Flyway 8.1: 147–150, Spring/Fall 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: 35–41, Summer 2003. "Some Kind of Helen." The Southern Indiana Review 9.1: 16–17, Spring 2002.
Editor and Contributor, "Studies in Modern and Contemporary Fiction: Carole Maso's AVA," a Dalkey Archive Web-based casebook series.
"First Poem for the Disappearing." The Comstock Review 14.2: 50, Fall 2000. Recognitions
Pushcart Nomination, 2007. Finalist, Arts & Letters Prize in Poetry, 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 Finalist, The Missouri Review's Larry Levis Prize, 2002 Finalist, Glimmer Train's Poetry Open, for "Attached to Hands," 2000 Finalist, The Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, for "First Poem for the Disappearing," 2000 Finalist, Glimmer Train's Poetry Open, for "What Williams Forgot," 1999 Awards
Recipient, Finalist Award, Illinois Arts Council, 2005
Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Distinguished Teaching, 2003 Third Place, Glimmer Train's Poetry Open, for "A Sort of Excavation," 2002 Presentations
Poetry Reading, Prairie Lights, Iowa City, 2006. Poetry Reading, Vermont College, 2002. Poetry Reading, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, 2001. "All Our Secrets Are The Same: Some Thoughts on Poetry and Eavesdropping," Knox College, 2004, and Vermont College, Montpelier, Vermont, 2002. Poetry Readings, Knox College, 2002 and 2003; Vermont College, 2002; and Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, 2001. "'Strange the way the joy keeps changing:' Re-reading and Re-Creating AVA's Desire." National Council of Teachers of English Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 2002. "Learn to Love the Spaces Between: Teaching The Silence of Carole Maso." National Council of Teachers of English Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, 2001. "Rupture, Verge, and Precipice." National Council of Teachers of English Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2000. Involvement
Proprietor, The Weekly Poem, an on-line literary newsletter Faculty Advisor, The Common Room Contributing Editor, Hunger Mountain, The Vermont College Journal of Arts & Letters
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Contact
309-341-7195
mberlin@knox.edu 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
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