Judith is the author of more than twenty full-length collections of poetry, most recently, Subterranean Address—New & Selected Poems. Oscar the Misanthropist won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award in 2021.
Few poets seize the natural world in the tender, particular ways that poet Judith Skillman does… For a poet who sees this world as does Skillman, nature’s beauty and cruelty is ours as well.
--Chicago Sun-Times Book Review
Forthcoming in March 2026
Brunswick, Maine — Shanti Arts Publishing announces the forthcoming release of OPPRESSION, a new poetry collection by Judith Skillman. In these poems, Skillman confronts oppression in its many forms—public and intimate, inherited and lived—through mythic reframing, family history, and vivid sensory attention. Across the book, daily rituals and hard-earned achievements can shimmer with unease, while compassion, humor, and artistry widen the poems’ emotional range. The collection’s central tensions—between silence and speech, duty and desire, pain and resilience—build toward a reading experience that is both unsparing and restorative.
OPPRESSION will be available beginning March 15th 2026 in paperback (ISBN 978-1-971191-00-3) for $16.95 USD. Review copies and high-resolution cover art are available upon request.
Advance Praise
“Skillman reimagines Penelope and modern marriage, braiding Greek myth with Jewish cultural memory. These poems ride a roller coaster of emotion and leave the reader purified and cleansed.”
— Paul Lindholdt, Washington State Book Award recipient for In Earshot of Water
“In OPPRESSION, Judith Skillman distills themes of Jewish family history, collective trauma, marriage, nature, and chronic pain into poems that are refined, quirky, and sensuous—offering deep satisfaction.”
— Marjorie Power, author of Sufficient Emptiness
Video Links
It was an honor to participate in Dr. Alan Blum’s Medical Rounds on June 6th at University of Alabama:
Interview with Sheila Bender
Jack Straw Alumni Reading April 2024
Fire on Her Tongue, Two Sylvia’s Press
Reading “A Short History of the Accident”
On Writing About Trauma
An Interview with Judith Skillman
- by Janée Baugher
Online Pubs
Print Publications
Poems have appeared in Poetry & Medicine column of JAMA (click on poem title, not pdf link)
Have a manuscript?
Consultations for poetry manuscripts—full length or chapbook
Client Feedback: “Thank you so much! It is exactly what I needed and more than I could hope for. Your ordering, sections, and themes make so much sense to me, and I also feel like they change the manuscript to reflect more what I wanted to emphasize and come through for the reader. I got very excited reading through it!” — Marilyn Moody, Flat Land
