Maureen Hull
Biography
Maureen Hull - Photo Courtesy of
Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library
Maureen Hull was born on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia and now lives on Pictou Island of the Northumberland Strait. She studied at Pictou Fisheries School, NSCAD University, and Dalhousie University. Prior to her career as a poet and writer, Hull held various jobs, including costume designing at Neptune Theatre in Halifax, lobster fishing, and a home school teacher for her two daughters.
Hull has been published in several journals such as the Fiddlehead, Pottersfield Portfolio, Other Voices, Contemporary Verse II, Qwerty, and blue shift and various stories have been read on CBC radio. Her first novel The View from a Kite won the inaugural Moonbeam Award (2007) and Rainy Days with Bear was short-listed for the Ann Connor Brimmer (2004) and Blue Spruce Awards in (2006). Two Feet Above Sea Level won the Atlantic Writing Competition in 1995 and Righteous Living was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award (1999). Her second novel, Lobster Fishing on the Sea was published by Nimbus Publishing in 2010, and later published as Lobster Fishing on the Susan B by River John branch of the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library in 2009 as an e-book.
Hull is a member of the jury for several awards and grant adjudication committees, including the Writers' Union of Canada (of which she is also a member), Nova Scotia Writer's Federation, and the Nova Scotia Arts Council. She also served as the Berton House Writer in Residence in 2001 and she was the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library's Writer in Residence in 2010.
Hull has been published in several journals such as the Fiddlehead, Pottersfield Portfolio, Other Voices, Contemporary Verse II, Qwerty, and blue shift and various stories have been read on CBC radio. Her first novel The View from a Kite won the inaugural Moonbeam Award (2007) and Rainy Days with Bear was short-listed for the Ann Connor Brimmer (2004) and Blue Spruce Awards in (2006). Two Feet Above Sea Level won the Atlantic Writing Competition in 1995 and Righteous Living was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award (1999). Her second novel, Lobster Fishing on the Sea was published by Nimbus Publishing in 2010, and later published as Lobster Fishing on the Susan B by River John branch of the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library in 2009 as an e-book.
Hull is a member of the jury for several awards and grant adjudication committees, including the Writers' Union of Canada (of which she is also a member), Nova Scotia Writer's Federation, and the Nova Scotia Arts Council. She also served as the Berton House Writer in Residence in 2001 and she was the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library's Writer in Residence in 2010.
The brain is a maze of corridors, crumpled grey passageways,
innumerable secret rooms, trapdoors, underground tunnels, close
and private forests. Facts, faces, landscapes drop in through your
eyes, ears, nose, skin, dreams, are lodged inside and never again
retrieved. Countries you don't remember visiting are mapped and
coded in your brain. Latent skills rust or fade in lightless attics. It
is impossible to know all you know.
Blood rivers away from the main stem, branches into small
tributaries, smaller streams. In the backwoods where capillaries
thin and thread, in distant murky backwaters are people you've
never met they are your barefoot kin, the ones with underground
lives who know survival lore. They know you, and they have
watched you bury things. Though you make yourself forget at
once, they know what you have abandoned, they know location,
time, and event. You fishtail the surface of your life, flatter
yourself that you understand motivation, sequence, result. You
are more than you know.
Published in Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada (Roseway Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999).
Used with permission of the Author.
innumerable secret rooms, trapdoors, underground tunnels, close
and private forests. Facts, faces, landscapes drop in through your
eyes, ears, nose, skin, dreams, are lodged inside and never again
retrieved. Countries you don't remember visiting are mapped and
coded in your brain. Latent skills rust or fade in lightless attics. It
is impossible to know all you know.
Blood rivers away from the main stem, branches into small
tributaries, smaller streams. In the backwoods where capillaries
thin and thread, in distant murky backwaters are people you've
never met they are your barefoot kin, the ones with underground
lives who know survival lore. They know you, and they have
watched you bury things. Though you make yourself forget at
once, they know what you have abandoned, they know location,
time, and event. You fishtail the surface of your life, flatter
yourself that you understand motivation, sequence, result. You
are more than you know.
Published in Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada (Roseway Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999).
Used with permission of the Author.
Critical Analysis: Defamiliarization: the self, the other, and Maureen Hull's "Brain"
Renée Comeau and Monica Grasse (ACPA Managing Editor, 2015)
Defamiliarization is a literary concept coined by Viktor Shklovsky. The concept examines that which has “become familiar or taken for granted” in order to slow reader’s perception and increase the difficulty of a reading of the object of choice (Margolin). When an author uses defamiliarization in their work, Shklovsky states they will “describe the object as if he were seeing it for the first time…In describing something he avoids the accepted name of its art and instead names corresponding parts of other objects” (18). This is exactly what Maureen Hull does in her poem “Brain” instead of telling readers what the brain does, she describes its processes so as to slow down readers’ automatic perceptions of the brain and presents it as the source for the mental illness of anxiety.
The first sentence of “Brain” evokes one of anxiety’s numerous symptoms: panic attacks. The claustrophobic images of “innumerable secret rooms, trapdoors, underground tunnels” and “private forests” which are all a “maze,” suggests anxiety is one aspect of the bigger realm of the mind (2-3). Instead of the brain being an independent organ, Hull transforms it into a labyrinth for internal entrapment within one’s own mind. Hull’s use of words that denote entrapment by trapped words in broken lines – “eyes, ears, nose, skin, dreams, are lodged inside and never again/retrieved. Countries you don’t remember visiting are mapped and/coded in your brain” – provides a metaphor for anxiety, which leads sufferers to feel as if it is impossible to achieve their goals (4-6).
Hull’s description of entrapment continues by exploring the contrast between who the person was, is, and wants to be, implying they have gone through defamiliarization. The mind contemplates this meaning particularly as the self encounters the other:
in distant murky backwaters are people you've never met…
…They know you, and they have watched you bury
things. Though you make yourself forget at once, they know what
you have abandoned (10-14).
The self’s old identities bury the memories of anxiety and panic. However, the poem implies that to move past illness, the mind must “flatter” itself to finally “understand” that identity is not disease (15).
Hull makes something unfamiliar mind suffering from anxiety – by reassuring readers that “You are more than you know” (17). Because the process of defamiliarization is only possible when the individual encounters a new perception and learns, the person must be destabilized before realizing that they “understand / motivation, sequence, result” (15-16).
While readers watch the poem’s self conceive of itself from different perspectives, they are given a new picture of an object they thought to be familiar. But, with a new point of view, readers learn that the brain’s “maze” (1) is what makes each person different and that automatic perceptions limit the learning available about the other and the self.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Hull, Maureen. “Brain.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport: Roseway Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999. 68.
Margolin, Uri. “Russian Formalism .” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Eds. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary theory, an anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 17-23.
Defamiliarization is a literary concept coined by Viktor Shklovsky. The concept examines that which has “become familiar or taken for granted” in order to slow reader’s perception and increase the difficulty of a reading of the object of choice (Margolin). When an author uses defamiliarization in their work, Shklovsky states they will “describe the object as if he were seeing it for the first time…In describing something he avoids the accepted name of its art and instead names corresponding parts of other objects” (18). This is exactly what Maureen Hull does in her poem “Brain” instead of telling readers what the brain does, she describes its processes so as to slow down readers’ automatic perceptions of the brain and presents it as the source for the mental illness of anxiety.
The first sentence of “Brain” evokes one of anxiety’s numerous symptoms: panic attacks. The claustrophobic images of “innumerable secret rooms, trapdoors, underground tunnels” and “private forests” which are all a “maze,” suggests anxiety is one aspect of the bigger realm of the mind (2-3). Instead of the brain being an independent organ, Hull transforms it into a labyrinth for internal entrapment within one’s own mind. Hull’s use of words that denote entrapment by trapped words in broken lines – “eyes, ears, nose, skin, dreams, are lodged inside and never again/retrieved. Countries you don’t remember visiting are mapped and/coded in your brain” – provides a metaphor for anxiety, which leads sufferers to feel as if it is impossible to achieve their goals (4-6).
Hull’s description of entrapment continues by exploring the contrast between who the person was, is, and wants to be, implying they have gone through defamiliarization. The mind contemplates this meaning particularly as the self encounters the other:
in distant murky backwaters are people you've never met…
…They know you, and they have watched you bury
things. Though you make yourself forget at once, they know what
you have abandoned (10-14).
The self’s old identities bury the memories of anxiety and panic. However, the poem implies that to move past illness, the mind must “flatter” itself to finally “understand” that identity is not disease (15).
Hull makes something unfamiliar mind suffering from anxiety – by reassuring readers that “You are more than you know” (17). Because the process of defamiliarization is only possible when the individual encounters a new perception and learns, the person must be destabilized before realizing that they “understand / motivation, sequence, result” (15-16).
While readers watch the poem’s self conceive of itself from different perspectives, they are given a new picture of an object they thought to be familiar. But, with a new point of view, readers learn that the brain’s “maze” (1) is what makes each person different and that automatic perceptions limit the learning available about the other and the self.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Hull, Maureen. “Brain.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport: Roseway Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999. 68.
Margolin, Uri. “Russian Formalism .” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Eds. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary theory, an anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 17-23.
Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Hull, Maureen. “Brain.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport: Roseway Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999. 68.
---. Clearing by Dawn. Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 2016.
---. “Heading North,” “Brain.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport: Roseway Publications, 1999. 68-69.
---. Homarus Americanus. Atlantica: Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Ed. Lesley Choyce. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2001.
---. Homarus Americanus. Water Studies. Ian Colford. Editor. Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 1998.
---. Lobster Fishing on the Sea. Halifax: Nimbus, 2010.
---. Lobster Fishing on the Susan B. Antigonish: Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library, 2009.
---. The Montreal Aunts. Christmas Family Treasures. Kacey Barron, Editor. Hugh Lauter Levin Associates Inc., 2003.
---. Rainy Days with Bear. Illus. Leanne Franson. Lobster Press, 2004.
---. Righteous Living. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1999.
---. The View From a Kite. Halifax: Nimbus, 2006.
---. Wild Cameron Women. Illus. Judith Christine Mills. Stoddart Kids, 2000.
Secondary Sources:
Jeanette Lynes. “J. Maureen Hull, Fisher-Poet of Pictou Island.” Words out there: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada (1999): 200-205.
Hull, Maureen. “Brain.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport: Roseway Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999. 68.
---. Clearing by Dawn. Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 2016.
---. “Heading North,” “Brain.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport: Roseway Publications, 1999. 68-69.
---. Homarus Americanus. Atlantica: Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Ed. Lesley Choyce. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2001.
---. Homarus Americanus. Water Studies. Ian Colford. Editor. Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 1998.
---. Lobster Fishing on the Sea. Halifax: Nimbus, 2010.
---. Lobster Fishing on the Susan B. Antigonish: Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library, 2009.
---. The Montreal Aunts. Christmas Family Treasures. Kacey Barron, Editor. Hugh Lauter Levin Associates Inc., 2003.
---. Rainy Days with Bear. Illus. Leanne Franson. Lobster Press, 2004.
---. Righteous Living. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1999.
---. The View From a Kite. Halifax: Nimbus, 2006.
---. Wild Cameron Women. Illus. Judith Christine Mills. Stoddart Kids, 2000.
Secondary Sources:
Jeanette Lynes. “J. Maureen Hull, Fisher-Poet of Pictou Island.” Words out there: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada (1999): 200-205.
