MSU faculty member’s book of poetry celebrates imagination, reinvention of self

By Sam Kealhofer

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Christie Collins, a lecturer in Mississippi State’s Department of English, pairs “art with poetry” in her full-length book of poetry—The Art of Coming Undone—anticipated to be published this spring.

A Black Spring Press Group publication, the book will be available in Great Britain this year and the United States in the Spring of 2023. 

“This collection is a kind of double hybrid, not only pairing art with poetry but also poetry with creative nonfiction/memoir. The poems are a mix between straightforward autobiographical narrative and a more ‘felt,’ emotional narrative revealed through the speculative, the weird, and the uncanny,” Collins said. 

In the collection, Collins retraces autobiographical events, like a life-changing move from Louisiana to Wales as well as divorce and heartbreak. Through these recollections, Collins demonstrates the “power of imagination to reshape and retell our own history.” The poems are paired with “beautiful, almost haunting,” illustrations by Dutch artist Erna Kuik. 

“An utterly compelling book,” said Catherine Pierce, Mississippi’s Poet Laureate and a professor in the Department of English. “In these rich, sharp poems, Christie Collins crafts a clear-eyed portrait of an ending, a fiercely bright new beginning, and the through-the-fire reckoning both require. This collection, too, is a kind of fire—these poems spark and flare and hiss and glow. They burn. And they light the way.” 

Collins’s work has been published in Stirring, Phantom Drift, Kenyon Review Online, and Poetry South, among others. Her chapbook, Along the Diminishing Stretch of Memory, was published in 2014 by Dancing Girl Press.

Before teaching classes in literature and creative writing at MSU, Collins earned a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi University for Women, a master’s from Mississippi State University, and a doctorate from Cardiff University in Wales.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.