Erin Belieu

Erin Belieu (1965 -  ) born in Nebraska, Erin Belieu earned an MA from Boston University and an MFA from Ohio State University. Belieu is the author of many books of poetry, including Come-Hither Honeycomb (2020). She cofounded VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, an organization that seeks to “explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women” in contemporary culture. 

Mother, I'm trying

to write

a poem to you—

which is how most

poems to mothers must

begin—or, What I've wanted

to say, Mother...but we

as children of mothers,

even when mothers ourselves,

cannot bear our poems

to them. Poems to

mothers make us feel

little again. How to describe

that world that mothers spin

and consume and trap

and love us in, that spreads

for years and men and miles?

Those particular hands that could

smooth anything: butter on bread,

cool sheets or weather.

— Erin Belieu from ‘Another Poem for Mothers’