Beverly Matherne

Professor
M.A., B.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette
PhD, Drama, St. Louis University
bmathern@nmu.edu

Website

Teaching Specialties

• Poetry Writing
• Form and Technique of Poetry
• Playwriting and Drama
• Technical Writing

One of the most productive creative writers in the Department of English, Beverly Matherne has emerged as an acclaimed bilingual poet.  Her fifth and most recent bilingual book of poetry, Lamothe-Cadillac, is from Les Éditions Tintamarre (2009), whose editorial board includes scholars from prestigious institutions such as Brown University and the University of Virginia.  The book of linked prose poems, “splendid, refreshing, and original,” according to internationally known Michigan writer and Francophile Jim Harrison, tipped the scale in Beverly’s favor to receive NMU’s 2009-2010 Excellence in Scholarship Award.

Beverly has received 7 first-place poetry awards in national competitions, including the Hackney Literary Award for Poetry; a translation award from Sojourn, at the University of Texas, at Dallas; and four Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in 15 selected anthologies from publishing houses such as Beacon Press, Louisiana State University Press, and New Rivers Press. Her poetry and translations appear in 34 selected literary magazines, including Metamorphoses from the Five Colleges, Inc. (Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, and The University of Massachusetts); Verse, from The College of William and Mary (with additional editors in Scotland and London); and Langage et Créativité, from York University in Toronto. She translated into French, with Nicole J. M. Kennedy, L’Artiste / The Artist, by two-time United States Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz, a special portfolio edition with original lithographs, published by Cross-Cultural Communications in New York.

Beverly has brought national and international recognition to Northern Michigan University.  She has read, and performed her poetry with musical accompaniment, in over 230 venues across the United States and Canada and in Wales, France, Belgium, and Germany—from Tulane University to Cornell University, from Cody’s Books of Berkeley to Shakespeare & Company in Paris, on National Public Radio, on Radio Canada International, and at the United Nations.  Her poetry has appeared in many exhibitions at venues such as Shakespeare & Company in Paris; Poet’s House Publication Showcase in New York; the Small Press Book Fair in New York; the National Library of Quebec; the French Institute in Bremen, Germany; and a  Baroque gallery of art in Torino, Italy.  Her book, Le blues braillant / The Blues Cryin', also released in CD format with fiddle and steel guitar accompaniment, received a full feature article in the international edition of Le Figaro.  A discussion of her bilingual writing (alongside that of Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nobokov, Guiseppe Ungaretti, and others) now appears in a dissertation from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris III.

Beverly came to Northern Michigan University in 1991, after sojourns as a tenured professor of English, with specialties in drama and playwriting, at Kansas State University; a marketing communications writer in the relational database industry in California; sole proprietor of a search firm in San Francisco; and a graduate student of French at the University of California, at Berkeley.  She received her Ph.D. in Drama from the Department of English at Saint Louis University and her M.A. in English from the University of Louisiana, at Lafayette.