Chelsea Woodard
Instructor in English, Phillips Exeter Academy
Biography
Chelsea Woodard’s fourth collection, Lentic Systems, won the 2026 Vassar Miller Prize and is forthcoming in 2027 from the University of North Texas Press. Her previous collection, At the Lepidopterist’s House, was the recipient of the 2022 Michael Waters Prize, the 2024 Poetry by the Sea Book Award, and the 2025 New Hampshire Literary Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her poems are included in the anthologies: In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) and Poetry Is Bread (Nirala, 2025), and her work has appeared in Narrative, The Threepenny Review, Blackbird, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. Chelsea is the recipient of the Peter Heinegg Literary Award from Union College, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Tyrone Guthrie Centre. She lives in New Hampshire currently and teaches in the English Department at Phillips Exeter Academy.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
A few years ago, I became really interested in the concepts of individual and collective memory, particularly as it applies to artists who share a particular cultural or ethnic background. I have always been drawn to Jewish writers and artists as influences, often without even knowing at first they were Jewish–finding something in their sensibility (from Walter Benjamin to Primo Levi to Anthony Hecht to Grace Paley to Adrienne Rich) that spoke to me deeply. I designed a class at the school where I teach called The Jewish Literary Imagination to explore ideas of inheritance and imagination among Jewish writers because it is something I have experienced myself as a poet and reader and was something I wanted to consider more critically alongside smart students. In my poems, history is often present in the form of ritual, myth, inherited stories, or intergenerational memory. In my most recent collection, when writing poems about the death of my father, images that struck me and made their way into my lines were at times things like my mother keep a yahrzeit candle burning for months after his death, even though she was not very observant, and the memories of beloved family friends, who had survived the Holocaust, surface in poems like \”Talisman,\” which reflects on the idea of home and uprootedness across generations. When I look to myth, I sometimes gravitate towards figures from the Hebrew Bible, such as Samson in my new book, in order to try to come to terms with large themes of vitality, power, and death. Moving beyond the personal, in my new collection, I have explored issues surrounding women\’s health, in contemporary and historical terms, through figures like Gisella Perl, and I am currently working on a series of persona poems for a new project about Marc Chagall, one of my favorite visual artists, considering the ways that exhile and loss shaped his world view and art. Jewish writers, artists, and stories are often a point of reference and inspiration for me as a writer, and I am grateful to be a part of such a rich literary and imaginative community extending through place and time.
Published Works
Lentic Systems (Book). University of North Texas Press. Forthcoming, 2027.
At the Lepidopterist’s House (Book). Southern Indiana Review Press, October 27, 2023.
Solitary Bee (Book). Measure Press. October 1, 2016.
Vellum. (Book). Able Muse Press. November 17, 2014.
Poems:
”Rookery” Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. May, 2026.
“What my Father Taught Me about the Snow.” Finalist, Narrative Prize. Narrative Magazine. March, 2026.
“In That Other Dream Where We Live Forever.” 32 Poems. Winter 2025.
“As Samson.” Finalist, William Matthews Poetry Prize. Asheville Poetry Review. February 2025.
“Jacob Grimm.” Poetry is Bread Anthology (Nirala). 2025.
“Silphium,” “Driving in Bobby’s Red Truck, Dreaming of Janis Joplin,” “On Re-Reading ‘Hills Like White Elephants,” “Pennyroyal.” Finalists, Coniston Poetry Prize. Fall, 2024.
“Heron.” Blackbird. Winter 2024.
“Lentic Systems.” Blackbird. Winter 2024.
“Luna Moth.” Blackbird. Winter 2024.
“In the Matter of.” In the Tempered Dark Anthology (Black Lawrence Press). February 2024.
“At Cerveteri.” 32 Poems. 2022.
“Double-Portrait: Migraine.” Birmingham Poetry Review. 2021.
“At the Lepidopterist’s House.” Blackbird. May 2020.
“Articulator.” (Poem). River Styx. Winter 2018.
“Herding Dog.” (Poem). 32 Poems. January 2018.
“Coyote.” (Poem). 32 Poems. January 2018.
“Wren’s Nest” (Poem). 3rd Place Winner, William Matthews Poetry Prize. Asheville Poetry Review, 2017.
“Hypatia.” (Poem). Blackbird. December 2016.
“Cardinal.” (Poem). Blackbird. December 2016.
“Charis.” (Poem). Blackbird. December 2016.
“Keeping Bees.” American Arts Quarterly. Featured poem, 2016.
“The Flower Press.” (Poem). Featured poem on American Life in Poetry. July 2015.
Featured Poet (multiple poems). Mezzo Cammin. June issue, 2015.
“Folk Tale.” (Poem). Featured poem on Poetry Daily. November 22, 2014.
“Finding the Porn Magazines.” (Poem). Featured poem on Verse Daily. October 19, 2014.
“Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting.” (Poem). Birmingham Poetry Review. Spring 2014.
“Folk Tale.” (Poem). Birmingham Poetry Review. Spring 2014.
“Our Swords.” (Poem). The Threepenny Review. December 2013.
“Prodigal.” (Poem). 32 Poems. Fall 2013.
“Chaperone.” (Poem). 32 Poems. Fall 2013.
“Girl Worker at the Ponemah Mills.” (Poem). Poetry Northwest. Spring 2013.
“St. Zita.” (Poem). Blackbird. May 2013.
“Midwinter.” (Poem). Blackbird. May 2013.
“Finding the Porn Magazines.” (Poem). Best New Poets Anthology 2011. January 2012.
“Dinky Toys.” (Poem). Southwest Review. January 2012.
“Wedding Day.” (Poem). New South. Spring 2012.
“The Illustrated Organism.” (Poem). Measure. Spring 2012.
“Whale Song.” (Poem). 32 Poems. Spring 2010.
“Lupines.” (Poem). Iron Horse Literary Review. Spring 2010.
“Solitary Bee.” (Poem). Shenandoah. Fall 2009.
“The Casket Maker.” (Poem). Dark Horse: Scottish-American Poetry Magazine. Summer 2009.
“The Swimming Hole.” (Poem). Measure. 2008.
“Things We Inherit.” (Poem). Measure. 2008.
Prose:
”Garudasana.” Fourth Genre. Forthcoming in November, 2026.
“Ideas into Motion.” (Prose feature). Hamptonia. Fall 2017.
“Seeing Global.” (Prose feature). Hamptonia. Fall 2016.
Visual Art:
“Mooselookmeguntic Lake” (photograph series). Radar Poetry, March 2025.
“Mourners” (Drawing). 32 Poems Marginalia series, March 2022.
“Accustomed to Danger: Drawings on Paper,” 32 Poems Marginalia series, March 2018.
Links to Sample Works
