Amanda Shaw ’97J

Alumnae Poet

Amanda Shaw
Amanda Shaw graduated from Smith in January of 1997 and set out into the world with a vague idea of what was ahead. At each juncture, the desire to write returned, and after 20 years of teaching and editing, she pursued her M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Since graduating in January 2020, she has been a caretaker for her mother while taking on freelance writing, teaching, and editing work. Though she has lived in Brooklyn, Detroit, Geneva, and Rome, she currently divides her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, D.C. She has worked at the World Bank since 2012, and recently became the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review. 
 
Shaw’s work implores us to consider what “home” means, particularly in the midst of an ever-worsening climate emergency. Her work probes language’s capacities in the hope that art might move us to a deeper commitment to life in all its forms. Her upcoming collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, is due out from Lily Poetry Review Books in March 2024.

Select Poems

October frst, the raw air tempting the cats
to a truce, burying
battle lines in the duvet’s down. It’s Sunday:
no calls to doctors

I have to convince to help, no promises
to Medi-swear-to-god
she’s worth the money. Down the road
someone’s mowing,

adult children gather next door; late-season bees
drowsing and curious
mean a grandchild is going to cry. Tractors,
manure: weekends

just a different set of chores—
Dust banisters, Empty litter, Mop floor.
My hands are drying out. These little brats,
they’re “geriatric”—

fourteen years ago someone found them
in a wall, together, mewling
and kittenhood was shared in tiny baskets.
Now their fights

are so pitched I think I’m hearing tomcats
squaring off in the night
which is already too cold for September. 
Tomorrow I’ll promise myself

in unwritten lists Buy lotion, Call Care Coordinator,
Find gloves/scarves/hats
while Ginger, whose husband couldn’t die at home,
feeds the last hummingbirds.