"To be bright in my bones"
RESUME
Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is a teaching poet who lives, writes, and teaches in the mountains of Fayetteville, Arkansas. A native of New York, she began writing poetry at age six and won several prizes for her poems as a girl. Inspired by teachers and others who nurtured her writing, Suzanne takes a passionate interest in developing other poets through workshops, mentoring, and editing.
Her poems explore personal history and family, the allure of the natural world, the psychological contradictions and complexities of human personality, historical figures, and Christian spirituality. Her poems are lyrical but always hold stories.
Suzanne's books include the following:Her poems appear in many anthologies: Mid-South Anthology, Green Mountains Review's American Poet Laureate Series, Southern Voices : The Power of Place; Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany; Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide; Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets; Words and Quilts; and In Place.
In 2023, she was named a Fellow and grant recipient of Artists 360, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance and Walton Family Foundation. The grant allowed her to devote time for working on her chapbook, The Perfume of Pain, released by Kelsay Books in 2024, and to write new work for a full-length collection. She also was able to contribute to the printing of Today There Have Been Lovely Things, a book of poetry and creative prose from the residents of Magdalene Serenity House, giving these formerly incarcerated women a voice and an outlet for their creativity.
Featured on the website Poets.org and listed in Poets & Writers Directory, Suzanne was a resident fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1992) and the poet laureate of the Bristol Bird Club (her favorite place of honor!). Her poems have won acclaim through several awards and prizes, including two Pushcart Prize nominations; first place, Dr. Lily Peters Poetry Contest, third place, Arizona Poetry Society Contest, a Library of Virginia nomination for A Welcome Shore; first prize in poetry, Virginia Highlands Creative Writing Contest; seventh place in poetry, a Writer's Digest competition; and honorable mentions for poems in Now and Then and the Sow's Ear Poetry Review. Her poems are widely published in journals and magazines, including Dappled Things, Valley Voices, Cave Region Review (featured poet), The Christian Century, Poetry East, Image, Shenandoah, Slant, Spiritus, The Windhover, Anglican Theological Review, Southern Poetry Review, Penwood Review, ARTS, St. Katherine Review, The Cresset, Spoon River Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Edgar Allan Poe Review, Urban Spaghetti, Blue Fifth Review, ArtScene, Radix, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Lullwater Review, A! Magazine and others.
Suzanne's essays have appeared in The Nearest Poem anthology, The Writer's Room, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review and 64, and her reviews can be found in Anglican Theological Review, Psaltery & Lyre, Slant, and Literary Magazine Review. She started a poets group in Fayetteville in 2020, now the thriving Ozark Mountain Poets, is a co-founder of the Appalachian Center for Poets and Writers, and a former associate editor of the Sow's Ear Poetry Review as well as the magazine's guest editor for the final issue. She served as an executive director for the Poetry Society of Virginia and is a board member of Poets Roundtable of Arkansas and the Haiku Society of America.
