SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
Praise Poem About My Four-Year-Old Singing the Hallelujah Chorus from His Car Seat
Pantoum: On Responding to Friends When They Ask About How My Son Is “Doing” in State Prison
Villanelle: In the Same Week, Matt Is Ejected from His Varsity Soccer Game for Sending an Opponent to the Hospital and His Ice Hockey Playoffs for Gloves Off—Again
After Driving Eight Hours to Visit My Son, We Eat Vending Machine Crackers in the Prison Visitors’ Room
Poem in Which I Narrate My Son’s Prison Phone Call When We Unpack Killers of The Flower Moon, and I Am Happy All Afternoon
On My Curiosity About How the Mobius Loop of Multiple Addiction Disorders, Childhood Sexual Abuse, and Mental Illness Braided This Life for My Son
How to Cut out Dinosaur Cookies with a Small Boy Who Insists on Maintaining the Relative Approximate Size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s Hands to Its Body
Sonnet: My Son’s Silence After the Parole Board Tells Him He Will Spend Another Year in Prison
On Remembering the Sweet-Sour Scent of My Blond Toddler’s Body After Waking from a Summer Nap
Poem in Which I Imagine What Happened: My Thirty-Something Son Fighting Three Arresting Officers in His House While Knocking Over His Dogs’ Food and Water Bowls
On Recalling My Newborn Son’s Hold on His Flannel Hospital Hat, as if It Were Intentional, as if It Would Always Protect Him
A frequent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, VA Smith’s poetry has appeared in several anthologies and in dozens of literary journals, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review, and Third Wednesday. VA’s third book, Adaptations, will be published by Green Writers Press Fall of 2025, when she will serve as Poetry Editor of River Heron Review. Her bliss is writing, cooking, hiking and loving on friends and family.
