We're pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Beacon Award for Excellence in Teaching: Suzi Q. Smith. The Beacon Award is an award established over thirteen years ago by writers who take workshops with our stellar faculty, and the tradition of celebrating annually continues to this day. It should be noted that the nominations, deliberations, and ultimate decisions are made by the community, not by Lighthouse staff, which makes the entire enterprise all the more special. We'll be officially celebrating Suzi at our December 2 Holiday Party, but in the meantime, we've solicited a couple short testimonials from some of her fans, below.
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"I learned a lot about poetic forms, and am ready to learn more. I gained a panoramic view and was also able to try out techniques and forms. I'm excited to add forms now to my poetry toolkit. Today I'm working on a pantoum, a complicated form that Suzie Q. Smith made so accessible for us by providing a work sheet we can use for pantoum creation. She really invited us into the world of poetic forms with such openness and generosity. She wrote right alongside us, and shared her own brilliant and inspiring work as well."
Lora Berg writes with a light touch from her home in Maryland. She participated in the 2022-23 cohort of the Poetry Collective at Lighthouse after taking several excellent Lighthouse courses online. She is thankful to Lighthouse both for workshops and for fellowship. For example, Lora continues to write remotely for several hours each week with Judith Sara Gelt whom she met in Sarah Elizabeth Schantz's Getting it Done class early in 2021. Lora publishes in literary journals, and her book manuscript is currently afield with a number of small presses for consideration. Lora values each Lighthouse learning opportunity, and hopes Suzie Q. Smith will teach the forms course again soon.
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"Suzi's passion for poetry, the written and spoken word, encouraged me to go beyond my self-imposed limitations and ignorance. With her enthusiastic, steady, guidance I wrote a villanelle, a documentary poem, a how-to poem and took jabs at the sonnet, pantoum and elegy. There were other poetic forms that were out of my writerly reach in that moment, yet to read them from established poets left me astounded and poetically richer."
Marta Shoman participates in the Hard Times writers’ group and Lighthouse online classes from the San Luis Valley of southwest Colorado. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in two volumes of the Lighthouse Anthology, All the Lives We’ve Ever Lived as well The Conejos Circle Book; A Conejos County Anthology; The Crestone Eagle; The Willow Creek Journal; and The Denver Voice. It was in late summer 2022, that Marta began an eight-week class on “Explorations in Poetic Forms” with Suzi Q. Smith. Suzi’s vibrant instruction and passion for the written word enlivened Marta’s relationship to poetry and the craft of writing. It is a thrill to learn this year the master poet, performing artist, and first-class teacher, receives the Beacon honor. “I’m with you in spirit, Suzie, as you receive this well-deserved recognition and award.”
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"I have written a dozen poems, and read to my classmates several, unthinkable acts before this class. I have also saved away her overviews and examples for deeper study as I move forward on my own, confident in her materials and her gentle, casual, and constant reminder that "these are the patterns--but make your own," the greatest creative permission possible."
After a career in business, Stephanie Spong is now a writer living in Leadville, Colorado. Currently a student at the Saint John’s College Graduate Institute studying Eastern Classics, she earned her MBA from Harvard and her MFA in Fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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"I publish poems pretty regularly and have had some success in winning awards, yet until now, I avoided form poems as if they were a virus to be kept at bay. It's as if I've discovered a new language, a new place to visit that is open to me even if I let my passport expire and Covid and flu are back on the rise . . . What Suzi taught me, I can carry in a personal item. No baggage fees for the knowledge I've gained and how much fun I'm going to have with said knowledge in the years and decades ahead."
Laura Mahal is a 2023 graduate of the Book Project. She has published in 20+ anthologies, literary magazines, and poetry journals. Laura's a two-time winner of the Hecla Award for Speculative Fiction and won the Gladys Feld Helzberg Award for poetry, along with multiple state and national poetry prizes. Her dual passions are the LGBTQ+ and veterans’ communities—she frequently writes and edits for both, including her latest release, the 2023 anthology, Charlie Mike. You’ll find her at www.lauramahalwriter.com.
Curious what a class with Suzi Q. Smith is like? Good news! She's teaching an Intro to Poetry class coming up this winter session. Check it out here.
