Ithaca College

 Writing professor Katharyn Howd Machan publishes a prize-winning collection of poems titled H.

Writing professor Katharyn Howd Machan's collection of poems, H, won the 2013 Gribble Press national chapbook competition and was published this month. It chronicles a mother's experience of a daughter's heroin addiction. Sample poem:

NIGHT STORY

                        She thinks about swans, the woman reading,

                        and a tall girl with tangled hair

                        touching the fur of a silent bear

                        who will become a prince. Needing

                        a cup of tea, she rises, moves

                        to put the kettle on for steeping

                        good hot black to prevent her sleeping

                        before the clock strikes twelve. Hooves

                        of a golden horse keep pace across

                        her heartbeat as she stirs in milk,

                        remembering a gown of silk

                        she wore one summer day. My loss

                        is nothing she repeats and then

                        she pours away the extra water,

                        waiting for her only daughter

                        who, hungry, might come home again.