McNeese State University

Hillary Joubert, an English instructor at McNeese State University and graduate of McNeese’s M.F.A. program, recently received a competitive $5,000 grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts for his work of poetry.

Hillary Joubert can’t remember when he first developed a love of poetry, but he suspects it began with the stories his parents read to him as a child, which he describes as “sing-songy stories filled with characters in fantasy settings.”

“Thinking about it now, I’m not sure if I was aware of where the poetry began and the fiction ended, but I knew I liked the way the words sounded and the scenes they created,” he said.

Joubert soon realized that he could develop scenes of his own. His love for the written word eventually brought him to McNeese State University’s Master of Fine Arts program, where he studied poetry and graduated in 2005.

The 30-year-old poet, who now teaches English at McNeese, recently became the recipient of a $5,000 grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, a highly competitive award that recognizes literary excellence from established and emerging writers and poets.

“Poetry and literature is how our past selves communicate with our future selves. It’s how we document who we are and who we are constantly becoming amid political, social and technological change. If we can’t communicate, the world leaves us in its wake and we fail to continue moving forward with it,” he said.

There are distinct ties between Joubert’s poetry and a sense of “place,” which he attributes to being raised on a farm, near a reservation in Elton. He considers his poetry a “documentation of life”; his work includes such titles as “Pecan Season,” “Second Harvest,” “Resting Place” and “Burdens of the Moon.”

“It’s what I know and how I make sense of things. If writing is cathartic, then reading about someone who has been through what we’re going through makes it easier to overcome,” Joubert said. “This, I think, helps us to continue exploring what we know and lets us know we’re not alone.”

According to Joubert, his undergraduate students often have negative attitudes toward poetry when they encounter it in his class, but their negativity usually fades when they realize that their misconceptions – that poetry is inaccessible and difficult to understand – are wrong.

Joubert hopes to teach his students that the liberal arts, particularly poetry and literature, have relevance in modern society and are just as vital to education as math or science.

“Art fosters abstract and critical thinking. Critical thinking is how we arrive at solving problems. Art factors in as a guide to where we are going based on how we feel and think about where we’ve been,” he said. “If history is a ship, then art is its moral compass.”