Literature professor Patrick Creevy conducts his classroom in a manner worthy of comparison to Robin Williams in his award-winning film, “Dead Poets Society.” He reveals his passion for poetry in the classroom, and this passion is contagious, igniting the same zeal in his students.
Creevey said he enjoys teaching English literature to English majors as well as non-English majors taking his literature survey classes for other majors.
“I love teaching just basic English lit. I love teaching undergraduates. One of the things I really like is facing a class of students … of non-majors,” Creevy said. “Many of them are made uneasy by, or possibly dislike, literature, and you can kind of change their minds, and that’s a very fun thing.”
Creevy bears impressive credentials from both College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, which was labeled a Catholic Ivy University by Time magazine, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Creevy’s love for literature sparked in college, as he said  he immersed himself deeply in literature he mostly ignored in previous years.
“I really loved books, but I just didn’t give them much time (in high school). So when I went to college, I just went nuts. I got really into reading literature. I kind of knew from the get-go what I wanted to do,” Creevy said.
Creevy conducts his classroom with humility, allowing him to relate to his students on a personal level. With three novels under his belt and a third work of nonfiction circulating publishing houses, Creevy is no stranger to literary success.
Creevy’s latest work of fiction, “Ryan’s Woods: A South Side Boyhood Fifty Years Ago,” reminisces on his childhood in Chicago. While he says the novel is not autobiographical, there are many aspects of it that play off experiences in his own life, particularly the loss of a dear friend at a young age.
Creevy said the friends depicted in the novel are mirror portrayals of his own childhood companions. They reflect attributes of his Catholic schoolmates but still maintain individuality as characters. One of these fictional adaptations is loosely based on George Wendt, who later went on to star as Norm Peterson in the television show Cheers.
Though the characters are based on childhood friends, Creevy said the process of crafting a written story is exciting from the first words on the page.
“The writing process becomes an adventure the second you write the first sentence. Language creates opportunities. You never pass up a good opportunity,” Creevy said.
“Ryan’s Woods” was released on March 28 by Amika Press, a Chicago publishing house, thus enabling the novel to grow from its original roots. Creevy said while “Ryan’s Woods” takes place in the 1960s, it still deals with modern-day topics.
“It’s about bullies and how to stand up to them. It’s about sports, baseball and football particularly. And it’s about saying goodbye,” Creevy said.
Creevy and his wife, Susie, are snowbirds that migrated to Mississippi upon Creevy’s offer to teach at Mississippi State University in 1976.
“I came down and found out it was an incredible department, outstanding colleagues, great students and a great place to live and raise kids,” Creevy said.
Creevy said Susie was soon swept away by the MSU architecture program, and Creevy supported her dreams by also taking teaching jobs at Loyola University Chicago and Jackson State University during her formative years in architecture. Susie’s dreams of architectural success found the Creevy clan back in Chicago, where Creevy spent 20 years commuting from there to Starkville, solidifying him as a true migrant.
This semester marks Creevy’s last semester as a full-time professor. He will spend his autumn days in the snow-laden streets of Chicago, pen and paper in hand, and continue to journey south for the Mississippi springs and summers. He said he hopes this newfound leisure time will help to promote more writing and more frequent book publications.
“The best you can do when you’re teaching is revising. Hopefully, this way I’ll be able to produce books faster than I have in the past,” Creevy said. “You brood over a topic for a long time. I probably thought about the subject matter of the books that I’ve written for … oh, five to 10 years.”
An MSU John Grisham Faculty Excellence award winner, Creevy promises to continue promoting great expectations in his students and carry on his legacy as a Wordsworth enthusiast, immortalizing the great poets in a technology-driven society.