A few weeks ago, the Cape was visited by a late March
blizzard. My class was cancelled and I decided to stay home from work. The
winds were howling and snow was coming down sideways. It seemed a good day to
stay inside. Although the lights flickered once or twice, we were fortunate not
to lose our power. In the early afternoon, I noticed I had a Facebook message.
The editor of the Mashpee Enterprise wrote to say one of his reporters wanted
to speak to me about my recent third place win in the WOMR contest. Soon after,
I had a twenty-minute phone interview with Lannan O’Brien. This article
appeared in the Mashpee Enterprise on Friday, March 28.
Mashpee Resident Places Third in
Outermost Poetry Contest
By Lannan M. O Brian
Mashpee resident Robin L.
Smith-Johnson was pleasantly surprised when she learned that her poem placed
third in the regional category for the WOMR/WFMR Outermost Poetry Contest, out
of hundreds of entries from across the country.
“I received the press release at
work and I looked at it, and it didn’t compute,” she said. “I said, “Oh, wow!””
Ms. Smith-Johnson, a newsroom
librarian for the Cape Cod Times and an adjunct professor of English at Cape
Cod Community College, recently released a new book of poems titled, “Dream of
the Antique Dealer’s Daughter,” with collage-style cover art by her
sister-in-law, Liz Smith.
The book was launched at the
Cultural Center of Cape Cod the same night that she received news of her award,
and several other winners – Judith Partelow of Harwich, who won second place in
the regional category; Lauren Wolk from Centerville, who earned an honorable
mention, and Neil Silberblatt from Chatham, who was mentioned in the results as
one of the “top poets” from Cape Cod – who happened to be in attendance were
invited to read their award-winning poetry.
“It was amazing that everybody had
their poems with them,” Ms. Smith-Johnson said.
Additionally, members of the
Steeple Street Poets group that she leads with fellow English professor James
Kershner at the Mashpee Public Library each read one of her poems and one of
their own.
Ms. Smith-Johnson’s winning poem,
titled, “A Dropped Stitch,” uses imagery of a woman knitting to depict
isolation and death.
“I guess I’ve been working recently
with thinking about isolation and how it affects people,” Ms. Smith-Johnson
said. “Because I live in a family setting, I’m not isolated, but I guess I’m
just interested in that.”
At the time, she was attracted to
the theme of her subject knitting “threads of her life” because she was
knitting herself and reading a book about knitting.
Unconsciously, Ms. Smith-Johnson
said, her interest in death may have been partly inspired by her father’s death
two years ago, for which only she was present. Through lines that describe
“hoarse breathing” and “pulsing in the neck or wrist/until it too stopped” she
recalls feeling her own father’s pulse
in his last moments of life.
The last stanza describes the woman
gathering dropped stitches only to drop
them again. Finally she is instructed, “Never keep what won’t last.”
Although she has been a finalist in
several other contests, including two others judged by writer Marge Piercy, the
judge of the Outermost Poetry Contest, and one judged by poet Naomi Shihab Nye
at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, this was her first time winning a contest.
“I guess you do it (enter contests)
for validation,” she said. “You want to see if you’re making progress.”
Moreover, she said that there is a
community of writers and poets on the Cape who enter contests and encourage
each other to do so.
When she was 9 or 10 years old,
Smith-Johnson, who was raised by parents who were both writers, was inspired to
write poetry when a teacher read William Blake’s “The Tyger” in class.
“It was one of the first times I
thought, ‘I could do that..’” she said.
Ms. Smith-Johnson lives on Ships
Anchor Drive off Mashpee Neck Road with her husband, Gregory R. Johnson, and
her son, Ross.