S.W. Rickett
Filed under: Authors
S.W. Rickett holds an M.A. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Education, Reading, and an M.A., English-Creative Writing, Poetry. Poems have appeared in New Letters, Nimrod, Chouteau Review, Number One Magazine, The Kansas City Star, Switched-on Gutenberg, Smartish Pace, The Same, and most recently, Antietam Review. She received a fellowship from Colgate University in 1999, and a fellowship from the Women's Center for Graduate Studies, the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2002. In 2003 she traveled to Norway and Germany to meet with the adult children of former Nazis and to write a book of poems on the subject. She is semi-retired and an adjunct professor at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. She lives by a lake with her husband, Charles, and Lottie the cat.
About "Operation Gomorrah", Ms. Rickett writes, "This poem is in the form of a 'curse', which means in phrases. The pattern originates from liturgical verse. Each stich is broken by a caesura. This form is also called a malison. The stichs are split by a caesura into hemstichs. Lindemann was Churchill's controversial advisor. On March 30, 1942, Lindemann speculated that if 58 German cities, each with populations over 100,000, were bombed, that one-third of Germany's population 'would be turned out of house and home,' thus his euphemism 'dehousing' the enemy seemed about as serious as 'delousing' the enemy."
Winning Entry: Operation Gomorrah
Contest Won: War Poetry Contest 2004, Honorable Mention
