Poetry Books

From quiet domestic scenes to sweeping ecological meditations, VA Smith’s Adaptations traverses personal grief, cultural reckoning, and environmental crisis, always returning to the question of how we endure and evolve. The poems in this collection are anchored in the intimate experiences of love and friendship, but they also reach outward to myth, to art, and to the intricacies of a changing world…Smith’s voice is unflinching, often playful, always honest. . .steadfast in its commitment to bearing complicated witness. . . . Drawing on a wide range of literary, scientific, and visual art references, these poems are intellectually daring and heartfelt, and they both challenge us and invite us to imagine survival as a shared, ethical act. The closing sonnet crown, inspired by Donna Haraway’s concept of the Chthulucene, urges us to imagine resilience not just for ourselves, but also for the more-than-human world that we inhabit.

— Troy Urquhart, editor, Willows Wept Review

Smith’s American Daughtersis a jewel box of female speakers, rich and dynamic and alive and fraught. They nurse grudges and find joy, break hearts and take care, each one a complete person laid psychologically bare through Smith’s tight stanzas and sharp turns of phrase. There’s the neurodivergent librarian who seeks peace among her plants—and on stage. The ex-missionary who now finds “holiness only in things of this world”—bike rides, activism, and threesomes. Smith reminds us that these women—like all women—have shame and pleasure and secrets of their own. It's one last grace note in a collection that sings with full force.

— Kate Dailey, editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Virginia Smith's poems embrace the magic of everyday life, detailing places both familiar and longed-for, where the common thread is the poet's ability to transform the experience of a woman who is daughter, sister, wife, mother, and friend into sharp, evocative image. Whether it's "dust and dead insects flying. . . like dark fairies" from the ceiling fan to the kitchen counter or "Canada geese weaving/their southward skein" across a canvas of sky, Smith invites readers to explore the interlocking patterns that give wings to an earthbound existence.

— Charlotte Holmes, The Grass Labyrinth