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.
When you’re on the run because nobody’s shown in a handful of Sundays and churches come and gone, you sweat and listen with earbuds blooming the whole orchestra, waiting for the salvation of what feels like the godforsaken piano. But wait, isn’t this a piano concerto you’ve put on for just this occasion? Your feet meet pavement and push off from one thought to the next anonymous wave and deeper into knowing that August is dying and all you smell is the sea and all you taste are tears. You remember that now another poet-friend, sick too long, has died too soon and will not write again about a God whose many names she called. And you remember still more: the pastor-friend whose grief will go beyond every instrument, every song for her son who a year now is gone. O Brahms or Bono, Nina or Aretha, give us some sound from the pain suffered down to the finest point, where then we are asked, who are you. I run and remember that autumn will arrive and October will remind me of when my grandmother died, of all her lost words and letters, and how inside my house back then I played on repeat an acoustic version of Losing My Religion, or maybe I was listening for the trumpet’s blaring, Love Rescue Me. This season, I’ll go out to run that memory down and see another maple flame out to ash, another bag of leaves taken to the road, and all the recyclables headed for Redemption. Even then, especially then, may I remember, remember, what she wrote to me on a scrap of paper before she died: being born again is likened to the working of the wind.
Summar West was born and raised in east Tennessee and currently resides in Mystic, Connecticut with her family. Her poems have appeared in a variety of places, including Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Construction, Prairie Schooner, The Indianapolis Review, New South, Still, and Tar River Poetry.
Summar West’s poems have been published in a variety of places, including 491, Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Ellipsis, New South, Prairie Schooner, Still, and Tar River Poetry. Born and raised in east Tennessee, she currently lives in coastal Connecticut with her partner and their two daughters.