Ann Fisher-Wirth: "Sweetgum Country"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Ann Fisher-Wirth’s “Sweetgum Country,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2003 issue (Volume IV, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Ann Fisher-Wirth is the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Window (Archer Books, 2003) and Five Terraces (Wind Publications, 2005), as well as William Carlos Williams and Autobiography: The Woods of His Own Nature (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989). A third book of poems, Carta Marina, is forthcoming in 2009 from Wings Press. Diane Lockward’s review of Blue Window appeared in the Fall/Winter 2004-2005 issue (Volume VI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Fisher-Wirth has also published two chapbook collections: The Trinket Poems (Wind Publications, 2003) and Walking Wu Wei’s Scroll (Drunken Boat, 2005).

In 2004, Fisher-Wirth won the Rita Dove Poetry Award from the Salem College Center for Women Writers. She also received the Poetry Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as a poetry fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Connecticut Review, Georgia Review, and Kenyon Review. Ann Fisher-Wirth teaches poetry and environmental literature at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.