Judith Skillman's collection, Heat Lightning: New and Selected Poems 1986 - 2006 was published by Silverfish Review Press. The recipient of an award from the Academy of American Poets for her book Storm (Blue Begonia Press, 1998), she has also received a King County Arts Commission (KCAL) Publication Prize, a KCAC Public Arts grant, and Washington State Arts Commission Writer's Fellowship. Skillman's poems have appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Southern Review, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), The Iowa Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Northwest Review, Seneca Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She has been a frequent Writer in Residence at the Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, WA. She holds an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Maryland, and has done graduate work in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Washington. A writer, editor, and educator, Judith lives in Kennydale, Washington with her husband. She enjoys the occasional company of her three grown children and fraternal twin grand-girls.

Other poems by Judith Skillman in Verse Daily:
January 30, 2010:   "Indian Summer" "The sun rests on its stem..."
April 7, 2009:   "The Crinolines" "In cages readied beside water..."
March 17, 2007:   "Dead-Heading the Flowers" "Hold the stem of this flower..."
March 1, 2007:   "Sien" "The picture of sorrow..."
February 13, 2007:   "Meadows" "What would the meadow hold..."
March 8, 2005:  "Field Thistle" ""Herb and spine..."
July 5, 2004:  "Reclaimed" "No, the acre has no hold on me, I told the cold...."
May 6, 2004:  "Lattice," "The Arbor" and "The Espalier" "By its milky light the sun left to grow..."
October 16, 2002:  "Lilacs" "Because they signify a life / less sterile, I twist their stems..."

Books by Judith Skillman:

Other poems on the web by Judith Skillman:
"La Jolla de Mismaloya"
Six poems
Three poems
"Mum"
Two poems

Judith Skillman's Website.

Judith Skillman according to Wikipedia.

About The Never:

"Judith Skillman’s 'The Sister,' which I accepted for Seneca Review earlier this year, was striking for recasting Cain as sister and memorably arresting for the feral fierceness of the portrait. Her other poems in The Never are equally astute, unsentimental and unflinching; her identification with the icons and motions of mythology, the armature for so many of the poems here, derive from their visceral passions. These poems sizzle with elemental directness and judgment, linguistically sharp and probing. Like the never which seems indistinguishable from the always, this book aims for elemental truths which give us the comfort of no-comfort. That makes poems in this collection something to trust."
—David Weiss

"Pay careful attention to the lines of Wheatland’s: ‘to travel is to dream of wheat…to dream is to revel in scenery…to sleep is to travel inside the germ and the chaff.’ To read The Never is to venture into a mysterious world of the plain and the mystical, ‘the drape and pleat of hill and valley’ that sustains us."
—Tina Kelley

"Few poets seize the natural world in the tender, particular ways that poet Judith Skillman does…For a poet who sees this world as does Skillman, nature’s beauty and cruelty is ours as well."
—Chicago Sun-Times Book Review

"Skillman's was the first truly brilliant poem I ran across on my poetic journey, and I was in awe of the sheer skill of her line breaks, movement, and control... Much like Heather McHugh, Skillman is a 'poet's poet,' and to read her work makes me rejoice, as poet, in the possibilities of the art itself."
—Terri Brown-Davidson