Below is our transcript of our conversation with Robert and Denise Fanning
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas, and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Last time we heard about CMU's one-week classes in poetry and visual art taught on Beaver Island. This week, we'll discover that after students get that knowledge and nature experience up north, they bring the newfound creative inspiration back to the main campus in Mount Pleasant. More from my time in studio with Robert and Denise Fanning. He's a professor of English and she is the art coordinator for CMU Libraries…
Do you ever find that when the students that have this opportunity or take this opportunity come back, is there that sharing that goes on and interaction with their other peers?
Robert Fanning:
I think so because, you know, the students who come to Beaver Island and take that class, it deeply influences their writing. I think being there and that the act of close observation really affects them. So, I do see in the poet's who returned from Beaver Island, they have a different relationship to nature, a different relationship to language. And I think, in a typical creative writing class, they're sharing their work. So, and I do think it changes their writing as well. And so, they're sharing it aloud and other students are hearing what they're doing. And of course, students are influenced by each other's writing. That's part of the joy of it. you hear one student's poem and they're writing about this ancient pine tree on the island. And then, you might want to write a poem like that too.
Denise Fanning:
I would say that they also, the enthusiasm with which they come home and the passion that they have ignited within their work is infectious to the other students. And they, I've seen multiple students just really come alive through the experience where they come to be violent, scared, nervous, they don't know what they're going to do there. They don't really know what their voice is in their work prior to coming there, but something is ignited in them through the connection that they feel while they're out in the environments of Beaver Island that gives them a sense of a voice and a personal voice and a personal connection, and they start to find a new thread in their work. And this has happened repeatedly, where they just come home a completely transformed person. I'm not trying to oversell what we do there, because it's the student that makes this happen for themselves through the connection that they form. But that level of transformation that the other students get to witness when they see their peer come home having last year felt lost and voiceless in their work. And they said that they felt like they didn't have a direction in their work before they got there. And they were just kind of going through the motions. And then when they got back, they were completely ignited with a new way of working and a new way of seeing. And that is infectious. That really inspires other students to see that light switch go turn on for the students and see the way that they've really started to hone in on a vision.
RF:
And I just want to also add that it's not only within our own discipline. I had the unique experience this year of having two students who were not rookies to the island. The wonderful daughter of Kevin and Wilene, Anais, who's a high school student taking it as a dual enrollment course, She said, I've really only looked at this island through the eyes of scientists. And so, hearing me talk about the spiritual aspect of things and the metaphorical, she had this new kind of way of looking at the island. And Nick Hertzler, who's also the son of a biology professor here, Nick had been to Beaver Island four times. And this was his fifth time, and he was looking at it through an artistic lens. So, then they take that back into their disciplines. So, he's going back to biology students with some poems in hand. So that's really important, too.
DN:
Thank you very much for sharing the stories of those that go, get inspired, and create. Appreciate having you here.
DF:
Thank you so much for having us. I appreciate this.
RF:
Thank you, David.
DN:
Yeah. And the only other thing would probably be, and I don't know if this is a dean issue, a provost issue, maybe all the way up to the president's office or the board, but I think you should lock in a guarantee about the Northern Lights and the meteor shower.
RF: And it would help with the marketing.
DN: Thanks to both. Yeah.
DF:
If you come the week that we're there, it is the Perseid meteor shower every year, at least.
RF:
Yeah, we can guarantee the meteors. The Northern Lights are a bonus!
