Baynham winner gives stirring speech on family and art
By Daniel McCormick '13
In "The Oxy-Moron and the Poetry of Owling," Professor of English Kathy Knuckles Barbour contrasted her years of growing up in a rural Kentucky family with those as a poet and college professor.
"I am nothing if not self-contradictory," she said.
Barbour's comments were part of her lecture as the winner of this year's Arthur and Ilene Baynham Award for Outstanding Teaching.
She recounted how her family was at once a collection of high school teachers and academics and a close-knit group of Kentuckians. After showing a picture of her mother, father and aunt laughing and talking in the living room at Christmastime, she said she saw the same characters in her family as those she saw in Dante, Virgil, and other classics.
A self-proclaimed "citizen of two cultures," Barbour explained that she at first felt out of place in the academic world. She continued to have a love-hate relationship with academia, sometimes considering herself a phony, sometimes considering herself a writer among scholars, until seven years ago.
At that time, she planned a sabbatical to visit her ailing father and to write short stories based on her family. When her father died suddenly just before the sabbatical began, her focus shifted to writing poetry to deal with her grief.
The experience renewed her academic spirit, and she continues to write poetry to this day.
"I keep writing because I simply love it," Barbour said, explaining that it takes anywhere between 30 to 100 drafts in order to write a single poem.
Beginning with yellow paper, she sketches out her work until she is satisfied with her progress, then moves to a computer to experiment with line breaks and stanza form. The process takes a great deal of time and paper, which Barbour demonstrated by showing large stacks signifying each poem.
Barbour concluded her lecture by presenting two of her own works with heartfelt and electric renditions. "Sight Reading" and "Pointillism," written during her sabbatical, were surreal and emotional illustrations of her father and mother that sounded superb when heard straight from the author's mouth.
The latest installment of one of Hanover's finest traditions, the 41st Baynham Lecture presented by Kathy Barbour was a great success and thought-provoking entertainment. Drawing students and English professors alike, Barbour gave a wonderful lecture and ample proof that she truly deserved the honor of the 2009 Baynham Award.
Daniel McCormick '13 (Cincinnati, Ohio) is a legacy student whose parents are Joseph '86 and Joan Boerschig McCormick '85.
