By Amy Geiszler-Jones

It seems fitting that Jeanine Hathaway has dedicated her first book of poems to her 25-year-old daughter Margaret.

After all, the oldest poem in the book was written when Hathaway was pregnant with her only child some 26 years ago.

The poem is about a hermit woman – a frequent subject in the collection "The Self as Constellation" – who lives a spartan Christian life of meditation in the harsh Nubian desert.

When Hathaway wrote the poem, she had only read and researched about the desert but, interestingly enough, later she would visit the desert because of her daughter. A few years ago, Margaret, a writer, lived in Tunisia as an independent Fulbright Scholar. When Hathaway visited her there, the pair visited the Sahara Desert, spending a night in a hotel, carved in the soft stone, similar to the hermit woman’s abode.

"It’s funny that I’ve been so enamored with thinking about a hermit woman in north Africa when she was gestating and then she was the person who physically got me there," says Hathaway. "Psychologically, I went there probably because of her and physically I went there because of her."

While she’s written and taught poetry for nearly 30 years, "The Self as Constellation," a collection of 62 poems, is Hathaway’s first published book of poetry. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including "Double Take," "Best Spiritual Writing 2000" and "Keener Sounds: Selected Poems from the Georgia Review."

The 70-page "Self as Constellation" is divided into two thematical sections. The first part, "Stars: Fixed and Variable," explores spirituality and significant relationships with God, family and friends and oneself. Margaret is mentioned in several of the poems.

"They are at least emotionally autobiographical, if not historically autobiographical," says Hathaway.

The second section focuses on a third-century hermit woman who has gone to the desert to pray after converting to Christianity.

Hathaway says that section is based on research about "desert fathers and mothers," as well as her "going inside myself to think about what it would be like to have lived that life."

The collection of poems won the 2001 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry; part of the prize includes publication of the poems by the University of North Texas Press. The book is being officially released in April, which is National Poetry Month, although some distribution was to occur in March.

Spiritual and religios references are frequent in Hathaway’s writings, given her background as a Dominican nun for nine years.

"Having had that experience of living in a convent from 1963 to 1972 –I pretty much missed the ‘60s – has colored everything," she says. "I spent my childhood preparing for that life. I spent my young adulthood in it, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to figure out what was that, what really called me.

"Poetry gives me the chance to look at vocation from a variety of angles."

While Hathaway’s first writing love is poetry, she’s published in other genres. Her first published book was the 1992 autobiographical novel, "Motherhouse," which was about a young woman who spent nine years as a Dominican nun and then left that calling to become a poet and writer.

Since April 1995, she’s written a column – about "what’s going on in my head," she says – for the monthly publication "The Wichita Times." She’s compiling those columns for a possible book called "Such Old News."

She’s halfway done with another collection of poems, which she plans to title "Other House," about an ex-nun. Eventually she plans to write another memoir of sorts, in which she’ll intertwine research she has done on her patron saint Joan of Arc with her experience of living in Orléans, France, in the early 1980s with her daughter.