Biography

   Fran Witham began writing poetry in college, and some of her early poems appeared in The Journal of New Jersey Poets and The Passaic Review. She received a B.A. in English from Fairleigh Dickinson University, an M.A. in English Literature from Seton Hall University, and an M.S.W. from the University of Georgia. She has studied poetry with James Klein, Gregory Orr, David Ignatow, Melanie Braverman, Catherine Bowman and Gail Mazur.

Recently her poetry has been published in  Modern English Tanka, American Tanka, Ribbons, Atlas Poetica, Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka, Ash Moon Anthology, Red Lights, Paterson Literary Review, Nisqually Delta Review, Bottle Rockets, The Pegasus Review, Frogpond, Presence, Paper Wasp, White Heron, Poetry Midwest, Pine Island Journal of New England Poetry, and Cotyledon.

Fran enjoys teaching poetry workshops with the Fine Line Poets, most recently at King Philip High School and the Fiske Library, both in Wrentham, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and two sons.

Tanka

a sea

of brilliant silk

rustles

at the edge

of the earth

searching for God

on the lowest shelf

I find a book

and read quietly

on my knees

Could I stay beneath

a prairiefire crabapple’s

cascading clusters

of fuchsia blossoms

all day?

water sprays

from the garden hose

in late-afternoon sun:

rainbow

on the dogwood tree

smoke

from the campfire

that rose as high

as those old pines

clings to your shirt