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.
"Taut and restrained, (Skillman’s) poems tell stories in vivid fragments."
-- from The Pedestal Magazine's review of The Truth about Our American Births, by Erica Gross
Subterranean Address—New & Selected Poems
Judith Skillman
Deerbrook Editions
ISBN 979-8-9865052-2-0
$21.00
170 pp
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Hurrah for our long-lived poets! This is not to say anything against younger generations; it’s just that a poet like Judith Skillman gives a sense of a world experienced, of well-worn shoes, miles on the odometer, bike tires whose treads have long been rubbed smooth. Motion is the guiding principle here, not arriving but walking onward “into the state we call unknown,” as one of my favorite poems says, “our not having a map of the future perhaps / enough to keep the road to home whole.” This book is a guide to everything we could possibly know and see in this beautiful, crazy cosmos, so tuck a copy into your backpack, reader, and put yourself in this savvy poet’s hands. You’ll come home wiser, guaranteed.
—David Kirby
Judith Skillman’s devotion to both the nuances and deeper entailments that life and lineage present us is on show in Subterranean Address: New and Selected Poems 2014-2022. Gathered from her seven most recent collections, with a winning group of new work, Skillman writes of her subjects with matchless clarity: aging (“To be a tenant of the body/ means one’s chores are never done”), infirmity, family, the natural world, the lives of artists (Kafka, Nabokov, Lucien Freud, et. al.), and history (immigrant destinies, the Shoah)—all with measured feeling, as if to imply a dignity in our imperfection. At her best—and here she is at her best—few poets I know can surpass her evocative powers.
—David Rigsbee
In a moment of clearheaded honesty Robert Frost wrote, 'And some will say all sorts of things/But some mean what they say.' Judith Skillman’s books remain on our shelves because she not only means what she says, but says it with a clarity and skill that makes her useful in our lives. Any new collection by her is worthy of celebration, but a new & selected poems is worthy of true fanfare.
— Samuel Green
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Available from McFarland’s imprint Exposit Books
When Home Is Not Safe
Even if you haven’t been hurt by domestic violence, someone you know has and wishes they could tell you about it. Perhaps you are a therapist, teacher, academic, or social worker who wants to help those who are suffering. Or maybe you are in an abusive relationship and need to know that you are not alone.
The poetry, memoirs, and creative nonfiction pieces collected here tell of real incidents of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse, as well as of those who left destructive and unsalvageable relationships. The beauty and truth of the language, as well as the honesty and courage on the page, set this anthology apart from self-help manuals and academic treatises on domestic violence. This collection offers a path forward to healing, health, and fulfillment, using the power of art to give voice where voice has been stifled, forgotten, overlooked, or denied.
Great review by Amanda Fields from Literary Mama.
Order from Amazon, Elliott Bay, or McFarland
Judith Skillman’s class helped transform my stack of poems into a cohesive manuscript. Judith taught me how to identify themes, obsessions, and reoccurring images in my writing. I learned how to organize these elements into a kind of a symphony – creating movements and motifs, how to harmonize voices and use dissonance in the sequencing of the poems. Throughout the class, Judith provided thoughtful, helpful feedback, both on the manuscript’s strengths and where it needed work. I felt she was invested in my success, and she gave me the confidence to finish the project. I highly recommend Judith’s class to anyone working on a poetry manuscript.
– Julia McConnell, author Landlocked, Michigan State University Press 2023
Winner of the 2022 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize
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
