SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.

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In the place where sad 
is a verb she holds  
the window open 
as if light were a book 
she could live in. 
Over and over 
her small hands 
the fragile, brimming 
cup, the bluest  
page. Love’s tender 
necessary grammar.  
A flower pressed into the flesh 
of a reminder. Words  
twisted into feathers.  
Tiny arrows. Her broken  
origami bird. 


Silvia Curbelo was born in Matanzas, Cuba, and emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child. Her poetry collections include Falling Landscape and The Secret History of Water, both from Anhinga Press, and Ambush, winner of the Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest. She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation, and the Writer’s Voice, as well as the Jessica Noble Maxwell Memorial Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and more than three-dozen anthologies and textbooks, including Poems, Poets, Poetry (Bedford/St. Martin) and The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (W.W. Norton). Silvia has lived in Tampa, Florida, all her adult life.

The Body as a River

Something Like Gratitude