Poem: ni·loo (a personal definition)

I won a poetry contest! Check out this hermit crab poem!

Dear Readers,

I’m hanging my hat in a camper at a commune in central Florida, earning my keep by teaching children here. Teaching always takes a lot out of me, and right now I’m also hard at work on a copy-editing project — an enthralling book of poetry about which I’ll tell you when the press brings it out. So writing for Fool in the Woods has taken a temporary backseat. But I’ll be bringing you something new soon!

Meanwhile, I won a poetry contest, and today the winning poem came out in Frontier Poetry. I’m very grateful to the editors for giving this poem a home and for their kind words about it! It’s been a few years since I had a poem published and seventeen years since I won any sort of literary award, so as you can imagine, I’m tickled silly!

My poem, “ni·loo (a personal definition),” is a hermit crab — a poem which takes the form of something else, in this case a dictionary entry. It’s part of a chapbook of love poems, Ten for Troublemaker, which I hope someday to publish. You can read the poem here: https://www.frontierpoetry.com/2025/02/26/hermit-crab-first-place/

See y’all soon,

Joshua