UA English Professor Selected for Prestigious Burnum Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Robin Behn, acclaimed poet and English professor in The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected this year’s recipient of the Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award.

On March 4 at 4:30 p.m., Behn will be presented with the award during a ceremony in Morgan Hall auditorium, after which she will present a poetry reading.

The Burnum Award is one of the highest honors the Capstone bestows on its faculty. The award is presented annually to a professor who is judged by a faculty selection committee to have demonstrated superior scholarly or artistic achievements and profound dedication to the art of teaching.

The award was established by Dr. and Mrs. John F. Burnum of Tuscaloosa to recognize and promote excellence in research, scholarship and teaching.

Behn has served on the UA faculty for 15 years and holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Oberlin College, a master’s degree in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a master of fine arts degree in English from the University of Iowa.

“Winning the Burnum Award is a tremendous honor,” Behn said. “My life as a poet at UA over the last 15 years has taken place within a community of dedicated writers, both colleagues and students, who have been a daily inspiration to me. They are a various and invigorating bunch, and I believe we have kept one another at it, having serious and fearless fun with language.

“UA has been supportive of a large number of talented writers who have come from all over Alabama, and the country, and the world, with their pencils or their keyboards, to take this familiar medium-words-this thing we talk with all day long, and rearrange it into something that rattles or spars or sings…,” she continued. “The arts are an integral part of a university education, a vital way of knowing. Whether writing or teaching, I hope to bring that way of knowing to others.

Behn’s writing has “had a profound impact on many readers,” said Dr. John W. Crowley, professor and chair of the UA English department, in nominating Behn for the award. “It must also be said that Professor Behn has distinguished herself as a teacher and mentor. One colleague praised her willingness to ‘go the extra mile’ to help students develop their own work, to explore their talent in whatever direction it takes them … Her pedagogical textbook, “The Practice of Poetry,” has carried her thoughts on teaching to a national audience,” Crowley noted.

Since 1990, Behn has been honored with several major grants and awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999 — one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for academic or artistic achievement. Last year, she received the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Vermont College M.F.A. in Writing Program, and in 2001 she received the Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press for her book “Horizon Note.”

In 1993, she received the Pushcart Prize, and in 1991, she received both a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant and Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant. She continues to give readings of her poetry around the country.

In January, Behn was elected to the board of directors of the Associated Writing Programs, a national organization.

“I come from a family of teachers,” she said. “My father was an English teacher at Barrington High School in Illinois. He taught me that teaching is a calling, a noble profession. He never missed a day of teaching in 30 years, and every day he looked forward to getting students excited about words and taking a real interest in what they wrote. I try to carry some of that forward.”

At UA, Behn has taught courses in creative writing, poetry writing, forms of poetry, aspects of performance and, with co-teacher UA Professor of Dance Cornelius Carter, words and dance. She has been the director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing, and directed many M.F.A. theses in poetry. She is active on campus and has served on the Research Advisory Committee, Media Planning Board, Undergraduate Mentoring Program steering committee and the Blount Undergraduate Initiative steering committee.

She has published three books of poetry, “Horizon Note” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), “The Red Hour” (HarperCollins, 1993), and “Paper Bird” (Texas Tech University Press, 1988) and has co-edited “The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach” (HarperCollins, 1992).

Behn’s poems have appeared in numerous journals such as “Poetry,” “The American Poetry Review,” “Kenyon Review” and “The Iowa Review,” and in anthologies such as “Poets of the New Century,” “The Pushcart Prize Anthology,” and “The Best American Poetry,” as well as the website “Poetry Daily.” A recent essay, “In the Music Room,” appeared in “Planet on the Table” (Sarabande Books, 2002).

Burnum Award honoree names are permanently displayed on a bronze plaque in the lobby of UA’s Rose Administration Building. Behn is married to Dr. Stephen Tomlinson, UA associate professor of education. Their 6-year-old son, Simon, attends The Capitol School.