Interview with Katharine Whitcomb, visiting professor at UP
Katharine Whitcomb, Associate Professor at Central Washington University, is a writing specialization coordinator, poet, educator, writer and now guest professor at the University of Pécs. She is here on a faculty exchange as part of a memorandum of understanding between the Central Washington University and the University of Pécs.
How did you decide to come to Hungary? What was your motivation?
I became aware of the exchange agreement between our universities through my boyfriend Dr. Robert Hickey, because he had come on exchange to the University of Pécs twice previously and one of my CWU colleagues came to Pécs in 2001. I have been enjoying Hungary very much since I have been here. I also had the chance to travel to an interesting academic conference with Nikolov Marianne, to Szentes, Szeged and Kecskemét.
What kind of courses do you teach at the University of Pécs? Are they different from what you teach at your home university?
I teach creative writing courses as my specialty and I have a multi-genre writing workshop right now. We are writing fiction and poetry. I think it is hard to do creative writing anyway, and trying to do it in your second language is difficult, but the students are doing very well. I have about eleven students in this class. I am also teaching class for Central online.
How do you contact your students?
We have an interface called Blackboard that is similar to Coospace here. The whole course is online and I interact with them through that interface. They have two deadlines per week when they have to turn in their assignments and we have a discussion board, which is like the forum on Coospace. They can just post something then post comments about it. They also put comments and questions to me in a journal that is online. I do a lot of teaching this way. These online courses are very popular at Central right now, so that we are trying to develop a professional writing certificate that students could do online. There is a proposal now for a professional writing minor that would be completely online.
How are the students in Hungary coping with creative writing?
I think that with creative writing it is hard enough to gain confidence in presenting your work if you are not used to it. Most of the students are new to creative writing and it is natural for them to feel vulnerable. So part of what we are trying to do in the classroom is to make them feel confident, so that they can feel that they are part of what everybody is doing --it is not just them with their piece but everybody has their own work that they are bringing. They are all in this together. That is hard enough.
They also have to accept that it is not their first language which is also scary in some ways. Having a native speaker as their teacher where the class is conducted in English makes it also harder for them. I have a lot of empathy with them with all of the things that they are trying to do in class. The pedagogical model is also new to them .We are looking at things that they have created from prompts and examples so it is very different. We have a lot of good conversations in class about all of it. We are having a writing workshop together; they also have the chance to meet me one by one. I think it is going very well.
What are your students writing about?
I introduced a couple of story models: one was the journey, this is one of the oldest narrative forms, here the main character goes on a journey that transforms him somehow. Then I also had the visitation, which is when someone unexpected arrives and another one that they have been working on is the gathering, which is often a funeral, or a wedding. They are developing the plot within these models. They could use these models with whatever content they want.
Which year are they?
Most of them are in the final year of the old undergraduate system.
I have read on your blog that you are very active, teaching, writing a book, writing poems, and that you are also a long-distance runner. You have set up a personal record in Ljubljana (Slovenia) with running the half-marathon in 1 h 52 minutes! Congratulations!
Thanks. I had a goal when I was planning to come here: I really wanted to do a race in Europe. I have run quite a few half-marathons before, which is 21.0975 kilometres. I have spent this year mostly with preparing for longer distances. I was a runner since high-school, but it was only in the last seven years that I started to be competitive. Last year I qualified for the Boston marathon in the USA, which is a race where you have to make a particular time to be allowed to register and even then you have to be picked to participate, so this year in April I did that. Training for running helps me to prioritize.
How do you have the time to work on your book?
You know there are certain things that I really enjoy doing. I make sure that I take an hour every day to do the writing; I have journals that I write in so that I do not lose the details. I have a poem which is set in Vienna. One of my colleagues here in Pécs, Horváth József, recorded an interview with me and I read my poems in this podcast. I also wrote a poem about Budapest, and I am writing a short story set in Budapest as well.
Do you also learn Hungarian?
Yes, I have a series of podcasts and other materials to study. My colleagues also are asking me frequently how many words I already know in Hungarian, but I don't know very many. I got especially interested in one word, which sounded unusual to me: vigyázz (look out)! This was the first word that I learned, because it looked strange. In English we rarely have words that combine these letters.
Do you have a favourite poet?
Yes, one of my favourite poets is named Anne Carson. I admire her because she uses form in a lot of different ways. She has poems like an opera libretto, she has written a novel that is made up of poems in a particular form. She does all kinds of interesting things.
Would you like to share a piece of advice about creative writing?
My piece of advice would be to never forget that it takes practice just like any art form, so if you are a painter you need to practice painting, if you are a dancer, you need to practice dancing and if you are a writer, you need to practice writing. And it is not always good every time that you write something down, but remember that all of it counts towards your accumulated experience that will hopefully help you. So get your practice!
Thank you for the interview!
Thank you and thanks to everyone who helped this faculty exchange happen. It has been wonderful.
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