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FARMINGTON – Jeffrey Thomson, UMF associate professor of creative writing, was recently honored by University of Maine at Farmington and the University of Maine System as UMF’s 2010-2011 Trustee Professor. Nationally recognized for his poetry and its intersection with the natural world, Thomson plans to finish his latest book of nonfiction essays, “Landscape with Human Figure: Essays on Poetry and Place,” with the support of the UMF fellowship.
Established in 1998 by the University of Maine System Board of Trustees, the Trustee Professorship was created to recognize exemplary full-time faculty members at University of Maine System campuses; promote excellence in academic programs; and provide the opportunity and support for recipients to pursue continued in-depth scholarly work. Trustee professors receive both teaching release time and a monetary stipend to help support the work on their projects.
Thomson’s work on this collection of creative and critical essays will combine the eco-critical thinking he has done in his previous award-winning poetry collection, “Birdwatching in Wartime,” with an emphasis on form and structure from his latest poetry collection underway, “Five Satans.”
The focus of his writing is on the functional strategies of poets as they work in the natural world and how writers transform language, an abstract medium, into emotion and ideas about place.
According to Thomson, completing a collection of prose is generally considered to be the next major step in a poet’s career. ”I am thrilled at this vote of confidence in my continuing work,” said Thomson. “This will not only help me achieve a professional milestone, but will also contribute to the body of creative writing experience I can offer my students.” Completing “Landscape with Human Figure” will demand an extended block of time for research, revision and writing and the Trustee Professorship will provide Thomson with the time and support needed to complete the collection.
Thomson is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, two limited-edition art books, and the co-editor of an anthology of emerging poets. In recent years, Thomson has been honored with a Fellowship in the Literary Arts from the Maine Arts Commission in 2008, a Creative Artists Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 2006 and a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005. He has also received fellowships from the Wesleyan Writers Conference, the Sewanee Writers Conference and Writers @ Work.
Thomson’s work has appeared in Quarterly West, Isotope, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Brilliant Corners, Gulf Coast and Willow Springs. He received his doctorate in creative writing from the University of Missouri.
Nominees for the Trustee Professorship are recommended to the UMF provost who submits the final appointment to the University of Maine System chancellor for approval. Annual appointments to this esteemed position are announced at UMF’s Michael D. Wilson Symposium at which time UMF’s outgoing Trustee Professor presents a lecture on his research. David Gibson, University of Maine at Farmington professor of geology and UMF’s 2009-2010 Trustee Professor, presented a talk on “Utilizing XRF Technology for Geochemical Fingerprinting” at this year’s Symposium.
