The Arts Club will welcome Sheila Squillante, winner of the Wicked Woman Poetry Prize, for a virtual lunchtime reading.
Sheila Squillante is a poet and essayist living in Pittsburgh. She is the author of the poetry collection, Beautiful Nerve (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), and three chapbooks: In This Dream of My Father (Seven Kitchens Press, 2014), Women Who Pawn their Jewelry (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and A Woman Traces the Shoreline (dancing girl press, 2011).
The Wicked Woman Poetry Prize, offered by Brickhouse Books, is awarded to a poetry manuscript by or about a woman who is noteworthy or unique – someone who “broke the mold.” Sheila’s winning manuscript, Mostly Human, follows a character called Round Baby as she grows up and explores the world of the 1980’s. In language of both pinpoint accuracy and oddball whimsy, Squillante details Round Baby’s observations, as in the poem Round Baby Hangs on No Matter Hows:
Twice your life ago, sat a Round Baby
on the porch of a small yellow house
near the broken side of the Poconos.
Fat stumps of leg poking out from under
the walker, toes gripping purchase
on the urethaned wood of the deck.
Grandparents somewhere,
parents, presumably, too. In the picture,
Baby holds a nubby orange ball. It looks
like a planet. It looks like a tumor. She chews
on it and pulls futilely at the foam. Manual
dexterity comes later. But Baby can already grip
Grandfather’s cigar. Origin stories called her
strong. Said she’d hang on no matter
how hard he pulled it away.
The reading will occur on Zoom at noon. Following the reading the poet will be available for questions and discussion.
