New York native and Fayetteville resident Suzanne Underwood Rhodes has been named the new Poet Laureate of the State of Arkansas in a series of appointments yesterday from Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Rhodes’ term expires December 31, 2025. She replaces Jo Garot McDougall. Here’s Rhodes at the Fayetteville Public Library last year reading from her collection, “Flying Yellow.”
Rhodes’ full biography, from her website:
Suzanne Underwood Rhodes lives, writes, and teaches in the mountains of Fayetteville, Arkansas. A native of New York, she began writing poetry at age six and won several prizes for her poems as a girl. Inspired by teachers and others who nurtured her writing, Suzanne takes a passionate interest in developing other poets through workshops, mentoring, and editing.
Her poems explore personal history and family, the allure of the natural world, the psychological contradictions and complexities of human personality, and Christian spirituality. She holds words close to her ear to capture the rhythms and sounds that lead to poems.
She received a bachelor’s degree in English from James Madison University and a master of arts degree from Johns Hopkins University in the Writing Seminars where she held a teaching fellowship. She taught creative writing at King University and St. Leo University, and has given poetry workshops to students ages five to eighty. Currently, she conducts remote poetry workshops and classes at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. She owns and operates a small, independent communications business, PR Flair.
Suzanne’s books include the following:
Weather of the House (Sow’s Ear Press, 1994) — chapbook
What a Light Thing, This Stone (Sow’s Ear Press, 1995) — full-length collection
Sketches of Home (Canon Press, 1998) — prose poemsThe Roar on the Other Side (Canon Press, 2000) – a guide for student poetsA Welcome Shore (Canon Press, 2010) — prose poemsHungry Foxes (Aldrich Press, 2013) — chapbookFlying Yellow (Paraclete Press, 2021) — full-length collection
Listed in Poets & Writers Directory, Suzanne was a resident fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1992) and the poet laureate of the Bristol Bird Club (her favorite place of honor!) Her poems have won acclaim through several awards and prizes, including two Pushcart Prize nominations; a Library of Virginia nomination for A Welcome Shore; the first prize in poetry, Virginia Highlands Creative Writing Contest; seventh place in poetry, a Writer’s Digest competition; and honorable mentions for poems in Now and Then and the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. Her poems have been widely published in journals and magazines, including The Christian Century, Poetry East, Image, Shenandoah, Slant, Spiritus, Anglican Theological Review, Southern Poetry Review, Penwood Review, ARTS, St. Katherine Review, The Cresset (forthcoming), Spoon River Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Edgar Allan Poe Review, Urban Spaghetti, Blue Fifth Review, ArtScene, Radix, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian Journal, Lullwater Review, A! Magazine and others.
Her poems are also found in several anthologies: Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany; Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide, Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets; Words and Quilts; and In Place.
Her poem “Advent” has been featured in a variety of venues and publications: a devotional book She Prays by Debbie Lindell, 2019; set to music for Lessons and Carols at City Church, Philadelphia, Christmas 2010; Christmas service, Second City Presbyterian Church, Harrisburg, PA, 2012; Christmas card, Westmont College; and a painting by G. Carol Bomer, “Through the Needle’s Eye the Rich Man Came,” 1993.
Suzanne’s essays have appeared in The Nearest Poem anthology, The Writer’s Room, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review and 64, and her reviews in Anglican Theological Review and Literary Magazine Review. She is a co-founder of the Appalachian Center for Poets and Writers and an associate editor of the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review as well as the magazine’s guest editor for the most recent issue. She served as an executive director for the Poetry Society of Virginia and is a member of Poets Roundtable of Arkansas.
Suzanne is married to Wayne Rhodes, a landscape photographer. Their mutual love of the natural world with its birds and beasts, mountains and shores feeds and complements their artistic passions. Together they have five children, four grandchildren and one great-grandson.