Cheryl Pallant
About the Poet
Cheryl Pallant is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Field of Here and Light at the End of the Word (BlazeVOX [books], 2026 and 2023), as well as several chapbooks. Her work appears in anthologies including An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions, 2009) and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press, 2008), and in journals such as Conjunctions, Diode, Fence, and New York Quarterly. She is also a nonfiction and fiction writer.
She served as poetry editor for New Southern Literary Messenger, founded RVA Lit Crawl, and was a board member of James River Writers. She has lived in Richmond, Virginia since 1985. She holds a BA and MA from Long Island University and a PhD from the University of Gloucestershire. Her honors include the Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with the Richmond Arts Council. She was also a finalist for the Virginia Books Award, the Southeastern Booksellers Association Award, and the Bechtel Prize.
Region
Central
Virginia City or County Affiliation
Richmond City
Years of Residence in Virginia
41
Current City/State of Residence
Richmond VA
Gender
Female
Race/Ethnicity
White
Year of Birth
1960
Keywords/Tags
consciousness, mindfulness, embodiment
Website
Published Works or Performances
Field of Here (BlazeVOX [books], New York, 2026).
Light at the End of the Word (BlazeVOX [books], New York, 2023).
Her Body Listening (BlazeVOX [books], New York, 2017).
Continental Drifts (BlazeVOX [books], New York, 2012).
Morphs (with Grant Jenkins; Cracked Slab Books, Chicago, IL, 2009).
Declaration of Independence (Feral Press, New York, 2008).
Poetry by Chocolate (Feral Press, New York, 2008).
The Phrase (Feral Press, New York, 2006).
Into Stillness (Station Hill Press, New York, 2003).
Uncommon Grammar Cloth (Station Hill Press, New York, 2001).
Spontaneities (Belladonna Press, New York, 2001).
Selected Individual Poems or Performances
Cultivating the Space Between
from Light at the End of the Word
It’s the light in the sky that conjures the eye that transmits the heart
that foots the thrill where humanity thrives. It’s the glow in the go
that propels the walk that treads the start that upends despair where
lavender grows. It’s the reminder not the remainder, the being with
the doing, the tectonic shift that rocks a county and permits a synaptic
link. In the brain on the land where my family farmed for decades for
neurons for atoms and cells. Along the fence along the quiet along the
stream along the chug along the bottle along the road. In the places
between the spaces for breath in the nerves along the spine. In knowing
the unknowable and nodding to the frame splintered, the road buckling,
the vines bold in their grow. Be careful what you witches forth and how
you minister to need and wonton claims linked to chains linked to garrulous
fecal mounds far from compost. What’s near is far and out of sigh may be
close in mind. My body is nobody is everybody our back finds affront by
odors, the least of my worries becoming the heist of yours. Find a way to
befriend warts and rain and an inflated ego losing its hold. Flimsy that or
finesse wine to uncork. When I look toward you I look like love. When
you look untoward I flee until blush returns heart to hara the art of joy,
the call rewilding the tame unwrapping presents everywhere on the floor,
table, and mat because what matters involves the drift, melt, sink hole with
heart on the rise.
Cheryl Pallant