Heather McHugh
Encyclopedia
Life
Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, CaliforniaSan Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca (Smallwood). They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia
Gloucester Point, Virginia
Gloucester Point is a census-designated place in Gloucester County, Virginia, United States. The population was 9,429 at the 2000 census. It is also home to The College of William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science, a graduate school for the study of oceanography.-Geography:Gloucester...
. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River
York River (Virginia)
The York River is a navigable estuary, approximately long, in eastern Virginia in the United States. It ranges in width from at its head to near its mouth on the west side of Chesapeake Bay. Its watershed drains an area including portions of 17 counties of the coastal plain of Virginia north...
. She began writing poetry at age five and claims to have become an expert “eavesdropper” by the age of twelve. At the age of seventeen, she entered Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Her most notable work was Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993, which won the Bingham Poetry Prize of the Boston Book Review and the Pollack-Harvard Review Prize. The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
named this work the Notable Book of the Year.
McHugh was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
in 1999. She teaches at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers
Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers
The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers is the oldest low-residency creative writing Master of Fine Arts program in the United States. Prior to the founding of this program, an MFA in creative writing was earned via standard residential graduate programs that required students to be in residence...
.
In 2009, she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States. Based in Chicago but supporting non-profit organizations that work in 60 countries, MacArthur has awarded more than US$4 billion since its inception in 1978...
"Genius Grant
MacArthur Fellows Program
The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...
" for her work.
Biography
McHugh has published seven books of poetry, one collection of critical essays, and four books of translation. She has received numerous awards and critical recognition in all of these areas, including several Pushcart PrizePushcart Prize
The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....
s. Her poems resist contemporary identity politics. She also rejects categorization as a confessional poet, although she studied with Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
during the time when that described his work.
Her primary education included parochial school, where she credits Sister Cletus’s emphasis on grammar as an early influence. As a student at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia, a teacher advised McHugh against applying to Radcliffe
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...
, making her determined to get in. She entered the college at age 16 and graduated with honors, receiving her B.A. from Harvard in 1970. She entered graduate school at the University of Denver
University of Denver
The University of Denver is currently ranked 82nd among all public and private "National Universities" by U.S. News & World Report in the 2012 rankings....
in 1970, having already published a poem in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. She began teaching in graduate school, was a Fellow at Cummington Community for the Arts in 1970, and received the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
prize in 1972. After earning her M.A. in 1972, McHugh received MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
fellowships in 1973, 1974, and 1976. In 1974, she also received her first of three National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
grants in poetry. McHugh was the poet-in-residence at Stephens College
Stephens College
Stephens College is a women's college located in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second oldest female educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833 as the Columbia Female Academy. In 1856, David H. Hickman turned it into a college,...
in Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
between 1974 and 1976; she worked as an associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Binghamton between 1976 and 1982. She was married to Samuel L Watson the remainder of her life.
At 29, she completed a manuscript of poems titled Dangers (1976), that was a winner of Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...
Co.'s New Poetry Series Competition. McHugh’s first book of poems was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1977. After a second National Endowment for the Arts grants in poetry in 1981 and a Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
Colony fellowship in 1980, her second book, titled "A World of Difference: Poems" (1981), was published by Houghton Mifflin. McHugh was 35. During this time, she was a visiting professor at Warren Wilson College
Warren Wilson College
Warren Wilson College is a private four-year work college in the Swannanoa Valley, North Carolina, United States near Asheville. It is known for its curriculum of work, academics, and service, called "the Triad," which requires every student to work an on-campus job, perform at least one hundred...
in the M.F.A. Program for Writers in North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
between 1980 and 1985; at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York between 1980 and 1981; and at the University of California in Irvine in 1982. During 1987, she was the Holloway Lecturer at the University of California in Berkeley. While the top journals published her poetry, some poems were also anthologized in prestigious collections, and top critics called her observations astute and noteworthy as well as courageous.
That same year World of Difference came out, her first book of translations was published. Her poetry translation of Jean Follain
Jean Follain
Jean Follain, was a French author, poet and corporate lawyer. In the early days of his career he was a member of the "Sagesse" group. Follain was a friend of Max Jacob, André Salmon, Jean Paulhan, Pierre Pussy, Armen Lubin, and Pierre Reverdy...
’s French work is titled D'après tout: Poems by Jean Follain (1981) for Lockhart Poetry in Translation. In 1984, she became the Milliman Writer-In-Residence at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
in Seattle. The residency was initiated that same year, and McHugh has filled the position since then. During the 1980s, McHugh worked a great deal on translation, partly due to her alliance with her co-translator and husband, who teaches at the University of Washington. Her translation work includes well-known international poets like Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
and Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
, as well as poets like Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n Jewish poet of the Holocaust Paul Antschel, who wrote under the pseudonym Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
.
Her skill in translating literature by Slavic writers became even more evident with the publication of Because the Sea Is Black: Poems of Blaga Dimitrova (1989) featuring the work of a Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n poet and novelist. Dimitrova
Blaga Dimitrova
Blaga Nikolova Dimitrova was a Bulgarian poetess and Vice President of Bulgaria from 1992 until 1993.-Life:...
, one of the best-loved writers in her homeland, became the first democratically elected vice-president of her country after the fall of communism. McHugh translated Dimitrova’s poems for Wesleyan Poetry in Translation (published by the Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
) with her husband, Nikolai Popov, a scholar whom she married in 1987. (Her first marriage in 1967 ended in divorce.) McHugh sometimes uses the name Niko Boris Popov McHugh when writing about her husband. Popov, an expert in Bulgarian and knowledgeable in the German and French languages, also helped to translate Celan’s poetry, which was always written in German.
In 1986, McHugh received a Bellagio grant from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
. She published two more books of poetry during the 1980s: To the Quick (1987) and Shades (1988). In the late '80s, she also participated in an art project with Tom Phillips, resulting in a collectible book WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: The Class of Forty-Seven (1990). It consists of thirty images by Phillips which are interpreted in poems by McHugh and then further modified by Phillips. One of Phillips’s images, "A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel,” from the collaboration is appropriately used on the cover of McHugh’s essay collection Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (1993).
In 1994, Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993, a collection of 24 new poems and selected poems from her five earlier books, was published by the Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press
Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
. The book won both the Harvard Review/Daniel Pollock Prize in 1995 and Boston Book Review's Bingham Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
. The New York Times Book Review chose this poetry collection as its "Notable Book of the Year." In 1996, after the book’s publication, she received a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Writing Award.
In 1998 McHugh received the Folger Library’s O.B. Hardison Prize for a poet who excels in teaching. In 1999 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in New York State in 1934...
and received the PEN/Voelker Award. During this year, her poetry was anthologized in The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, alongside poet laureates like Rita Dove
Rita Dove
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now popularly known as "U.S. Poet Laureate"...
and Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry...
, and poets McHugh studied and taught in her college courses, such as Charles Wright
Charles Wright
Charles Wright may refer to:*Charles Wright , American botanist*Charles Frederick Wright , U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania*Charles Wright , Nottinghamshire and England cricketer*C. S...
, Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was an American writer and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979–1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland...
, James Tate
James Tate
James Tate may refer to:* James Tate , Headmaster of Richmond School 1796–1833)* James "Honest Dick" Tate , State Treasurer of Kentucky...
, Philip Levine
Philip Levine (poet)
Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...
, and Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York....
. McHugh also began to serve as a judge for numerous poetry competitions, including the National Poetry Series and the Laughlin Prize. She was a member of the Board of Directors for the Associated Writing Programs between 1981 and 1983. She served on the Literature Panel for the National Endowment for the Arts during 1983 and 1986. In 1991, she was the Coal-Royalty Chair at the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....
. In 1992, McHugh was the Elliston Poet at the University of Cincinnati
University of Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati is a comprehensive public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a part of the University System of Ohio....
. In 1991, she was the visiting professor at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
and, in 1994, at the University of California at Los Angeles.
She takes editing collections of younger poets seriously, and helped to select poems for Hammer and Blaze: a Gathering of Contemporary American Poets (2001), published by the University of Georgia Press, which she co-edited. About her job guest editing Ploughshares in Spring 2001, McHugh writes, “The sheer syntactical elegance of many of these new poems suggests an instrumental refinement for which I’m grateful: I’m an old Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....
/Anthony Hecht
Anthony Hecht
Anthony Evan Hecht was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.-Early years:Hecht was born in New York...
fan, and have had reason now and then to regret, during my quarter century of teaching in M.F.A. programs, the relative unfashionability of rhetorical flourish.”
At the end of 2001, McHugh’s sixth collection of poetry, The Father of the Predicaments, was published by the Wesleyan University Press. That same year, McHugh, with Nikolai Popov, received the first International Griffin Poetry Prize in translation for Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan. Her next poetry collection, Eyeshot, was published in (2003), and her latest collection, Upgraded to Serious, was released in 2009.
Awards and honors
- Two grants from the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
- Griffin Poetry PrizeGriffin Poetry PrizeThe Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
- Fellowship from the Guggenheim FoundationJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial FoundationThe John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
- Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, University of Washington
- Finalist for the National Book Award
- Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
- Witter Bynner FellowshipWitter Bynner FellowshipWitter Bynner Fellowships are administered by the Library of Congress and sponsored by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, an organization that provides grant support for poetry programs through nonprofit organizations. Fellows are chosen by the U.S...
- PEN/Voelcker Award for PoetryPEN/Voelcker Award for PoetryThe PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry is given biennially to an American poet whose distinguished and growing body of work to date represents a notable and accomplished presence in American literature.Awardees:...
- O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry PrizeO. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry PrizeThe O.B. Hardison, Jr., Poetry Prize was awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S. poet whose art and teaching demonstrated great imagination and daring...
- MacArthur Fellowship
Poetry collections
- Dangers (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
- A World of Difference (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1981)
- To the Quick (Middletown: Wesleyan University PressWesleyan University PressWesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
, 1987) - Shades (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1988)
- Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1994)
- The Father of the Predicaments (Middletown Wesleyan University Press, 1999)
- Eyeshot (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
- Upgraded to Serious (Copper Canyon PressCopper Canyon PressCopper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, specializing in the publication of poetry and located in the picturesque town of Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972, the Press has published poetry exclusively and has established an international reputation for its commitment to...
, 2009)
Essays
- Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 1992)
Translations
- D'Apres Tout—Poems by Jean Follain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)
- Because the Sea is Black: Poems by Blaga Dimitrova, by McHugh and Nikolai Popov, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1989)
- 107 Poems by Paul Celan, by McHugh and Popov (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2000)
- Euripides: Cyclops, by McHugh and David Konstan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
External links
- Heather McHugh at poets.org
- Heather McHugh at Seattle Arts and Lectures
- Heather McHugh at Ink Node
- Griffin Poetry Prize biography
- Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip
- McHugh, Heather. "In Ten Senses: Some Sentences About Art's Senses and Intents, audio (mp3) of lecture. December 4, 2003.