Latticework by Judith Skillman
Latticework
is a lush collection of poems inspired by Judith Skillman's collaboration
with Erika Carter. The rich free verse lines of Skillman's poems weave
their own richly-colored textures, enveloping the reader in new senses
of the world.
Samples of Judith Skillman's Poetry
Judith Skillman is the winner of numerous awards, including the Eric Mathieu
King Fund from the Academy of American Poets and the Stafford Award from
the Washington Poets Association. She has received grants from Centrum
Foundation, King County Arts Commission, and the Washington State Arts
Commission. Her poems have appeared in Iowa Review, Northwest
Review, Poetry, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Malahat Review,
and many other journals. Her previous volumes of poems are Worship
of the Visible Spectrum (Breitenbush Books, 1986); Beethoven and the Birds (Blue Begonia Press,
1996); Storm (Blue Begonia, 1998);
and Red Town (Silverfish Review
Press, 2001). Her chapbook Sweetbrier was published in 2001 as part of
the Blue Begonia Working Signs Series. Circe’s Island was released in 2003
from Silverfish Review Press. Skillman holds a Masters in English
Literature from the University of Maryland. She has done graduate work
in Translation Studies at the University of Washington, and teaches Humanities
courses at City University in Bellevue, Washington.
Praise for Judith Skillman
"Judith Skillman is a poet whose mind, memory, and imagination appearmore
compelling than the mundane realities of her life. Her poems often include
a kind of arrested motion what signals the clash of domestic chores with
artistic contemplation." --Madeline DeFrees
"Judith Skillman stitches a collection of mysterious holes in time
that take us from youth to middle age. The visual narrative of the poet’s
inner life traces time’s latticework threads with entrances and
exits, stops and starts, wishes and regrets. The trellis, with its ins
and outs, becomes a structure full of openings that may or may not permit
our entrance, a pierced wall that blocks creative flow, keeps us at bay,
and attempts to decry immortality. A flight of ravens fills 'the sky until
it darkened midday, eclipse-like;' the ripe apple 'fell, lay where it
fell, spotted.' Life’s continuous 'slip of fabric' is 'rent and
sewn together' as we travel the poet’s seamed and solemn path."--Joan
Stuart Ross
"'Above, below, it’s all the same/to a woman who has deep cleaning/left
in her bones.' The surface can’t be trusted because surfaces leave
nothing left to value. The artist has long since taken leave of the kind
of house-keeping,home-making, order-rendering work. Women embroidering.
Another kind of traditional work for women. Embroidery elaborates and
embellishes with fictitious detail, covering up the real work. Embroidery
is pleasing to the eye, but traditionally unimportant. The needle goes
deeper here, insisting on a different kind of honesty. It’s lonelier,
and more frightening, even in the collaboration."--Jim Bodeen
ISBN 1932339019, 88 pages, $16.00