“I am always finding inspiration out there.”
In April, during National Poetry Month, I had the chance to talk with Martha Silano about her writing process, her poetry teachers, her new book (This One We Call Ours, winner of the 2024 Blue Lynx Prize in Poetry) and her recent ALS diagnosis. This conversation was a real gift after taking multiple poetry classes with Martha over the past several years.
After this interview, I attended Martha’s book launch in September 2024 at Third Place Books in Seward Park and it was incredible to see her community of family, friends, and poets there to support this book and read poems on her behalf. Terrain.org offered a similar reading online and that link is below. Martha has two more books (Terminal Surreal (Acre Books, 2025), Last Train to Paradise: New and Selected Poems (Saturnalia Books, 2025)) scheduled for release in 2025 and she continues to publish her work widely.
Martha Silano’s poetry collections include Terminal Surreal (Acre Books, 2025), Last Train to Paradise: New and Selected Poems (Saturnalia Books, 2025), This One We Call Ours (Lynx House Press, 2024), winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize, Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019), Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books, 2014), and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception (Saturnalia Books, 2011). Her awards include North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize and The Cincinnati Review’s Robert and Adele Schiff Award.
A Tribute to Martha Silano by Eleven Poets: An Online Reading Hosted by Terrain.org
Possible Diagnosis
What’s that stone, that one stone edging
toward the edge? In Italian, for spider,
say ragno. Say web
in a musical spell. I was with a friend,
on my last round. When I told her
I might be dying,
she was my dictator of snow, holding me
and my gone-berserk nerves.
I told her my mother
puts the relevant clues in crossword puzzles:
Riley, refs, and palomas. Isn’t she
the best cheerer-upper ever?
Maybe I’m a witch for the drama cauldron,
maybe I just need more sleep, more
nooky, cookies-n-cream.
Old and unheavy, in need of rest. God?
I don’t quite believe, but at night
I let myself go fetal,
hands pressed like that plastic pair Svennie found
at a thrift store in Shelton. To breathe.
To swallow. Now I understand:
incurable might not be the worst thing. Upsides, like creasing
the cloth napkins, carrying them down to their home
in a living room drawer,
admiring the spotted towhee making a ruckus in dead leaves.
I thought it would be like a thumb coming down
on a spider’s body, but it was not.
Published in The Shore
More about Terminal Surreal coming September 2025 in University of Washington Magazine. Self-Elegies recently published on the poetryfoundation.org.
Her Deepest Ecologies is recorded at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle, WA. Thanks to their Artist Support Program and studio engineer Ayesha Ubayatilaka. All episodes are available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. This podcast is free and available to anyone. For more information or to be considered for a future episode, reach out via email at: jessicagigot@gmail.com.
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