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.
I read about an archaeological dig in Alaska where they upturned multiple layers of earth and began to smell something cooking. Aroma, there in the dirt: acrid shadow of a sizzle, silvery salmon skin crisping, nuts cracking in high heat, seal meat dripping fat over flame. Who knew. When
I imagined being Indiana Jones I thought of arrowheads and jaw bones, pottery shards and faceless dolls, fabric scraps lovelier than anything I wear. I thought treasure, not memory. I thought there was a difference. I can’t help
but roll up my sleeves. I ask other people to hand me their memories caked in hard brown mud. They always hesitate but then unpack an entire trove. I chip away at each artifact with a sharpened trowel; I find edges with a stiff brush. Everything is more beautiful warmed in someone else’s
hands. I keep asking my father to sing songs he learned on fishing boats, like I don’t already know them by heart. I keep asking my mother to tell me about that day she walked into the ocean in a big fur coat. I wrote it out years ago. I just like it in her voice.
Kate Welsh is a poet living in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from Warren Wilson in 2023 and a BA from Barnard College in 2013. She is the director of communications at the Guggenheim Foundation.
