Constance Hunting

Constance Hunting (1925-April 5, 2006), the poet and publisher, was widely known in the Northeastern United States, particularly in her home state of Rhode Island, her adopted state of Indiana, and later in Maine where she taught English literature and creative writing at the University of Maine at Orono until her death on April 5th, 2006. Hunting received her B.A. from Brown University in 1947, studied at Duke University from 1950-1953, and then lived in West Lafayette, IN, home of Purdue University, until 1968. From that time, she lived in Orono, Maine with her husband Robert, who was Chair of the English department at UMO until his retirement.

Hunting trained as a classical pianist, but is best known for her work as a poet, and her promotion of other Maine writers through the Puckerbrush Review literary magazine, which she established in 1971. She was also the founder and editor of Puckerbrush Press, which, over the twenty-eight years of its existence, published a great variety of work by many writers, domestic and international, including May Sarton, James Kelman, Angelica Garnett, and other figures from the Bloomsbury Group. Here is a partial list of Puckerbrush Press authors: Michael Alpert, Virgil Bisset, Farnham Blair, James Boswell, Tony Brinkley, Rebecca Cummings, Martha Todd Dudman, Christopher Fahy, Angelica Garnett, Maxim Gorky, Chenoweth Hall, Sonya Hess, Merle Hillman, Mary Gray Hughes, Kathleen Kranidas, Michael McMahon, Muska Nagel, Thelma Nason, Deborah Pease, Sanford Phippen, Pat Ranzoni, Harvena Richter, Mark Rutter, Vita Sackville-West, Lee Sharkey, Margaret Shipley, Mrs. Leslie Stephen, Robert Taylor, Paul Weinman, and Douglas Young.

Works

• After the Stravinsky Concert and Other Poems (1969)
• Cimmerian and Other Poems (1972)
• Beyond the Summerhouse: A Narrative Poem (1976)
• Nightwalk and Other Poems (1980)
• Dream Cities (1982)
• Collected Poems 1969-1982 (1983)
• A Day at the Shore: A Poem (1983)
• Between the Worlds: Poems 1983-1988 (1989)
• Hawkedon (1990)
• The Myth of Horizon (1991)
• At Rochebonne: A Poem (1994)
• The Shape of Memory (1998)
• Natural Things: Collected Poems 1969-1998 (1999)
• An Amazement (2002)
• The Sky Flower (2005)

Her papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

External links

• Feature on Hunting from UMaine Today magazine
• Hunting interviewed by Sandy Phippen on MPBN's "A Good Read"

Persondata
Name	Hunting, Constance
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1925
Place of birth
Date of death	April 5, 2006
Place of death	Bangor, ME