On Monday, I received the shocking news that Kim Bridgford had been admitted to hospice.  On Friday, the next news arrived:  Kim Bridgford has passed away.  Wait!  That’s too much too fast. I had no idea! My thoughts immediately flashed to the poem I’ve copied below, which is included in my 2018 poetry collection Windshift. 

Meditating on the brevity of life, and being aware at my age of the relatively short time ahead of me, still does not prepare the mind and heart for the reality: the sudden loss of someone much younger, someone who has been the center of so much vitality in the poetry world, in my poetry world.

I first met Kim at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.  She had taken over from the founders as executive director of the West Chester Poetry Conference in Form and Narrative.  This conference, which I first attended in about 1998, was a peak experience in my life as a poet in that and subsequent years. The workshops and friendships I found there affirmed and fostered my craft.  Being among poets “speaking my language” created valuable new connections for me in the poetry universe.  At the end of her stint at that Conference, Kim founded a new conference dedicated to a global and diverse appreciation of voices in poetry.  I was able to attend this new conference, Poetry by the Sea, in Madison, Connecticut in 2019.

Kim was also the founder and editor of Mezzo Cammin, an online magazine publishing the work of women poets working in traditional forms.  I found a home there, too.  Kim kindly provided a blurb (complimentary review) for the back cover of my first book, Road Trip, in 2014.  Needless to say, I remain transformed and grateful to her for her commitment to poetry and to poets like me. Reading the tributes to her on Facebook now, I know I’m not alone.  Her grace and generosity are alive and well in the hearts of many, even as her physical presence on this earth is no more.

Turns out the “immortality” I might wish for as a writer isn’t embodied so much in the words I leave behind.  What matters, as Kim Bridgford–poet, mentor, friend–so beautifully exemplified continues through time unmeasured in other lives touched with kindness, encouragement, and love.  Good to know.

Thank you, Kim Bridgford.

 

Obituary

 

So she is dead before we even thought

that she was sick.  She chose. The cancer grew

with no “courageous battle” ever fought,

no patronage, no probing interview,

no Facebook page promoting prayer for her,

no million dollar drugs, no telethon,

no foreign clinic promising a cure,

no holding out for hope. She’s simply gone.

 

I want to be as definite as that

when my turn comes, ineffably to keep

my final secret like a Cheshire cat,

serenely smiling as I fall asleep.

I wish I would have been there at her side

to say, You go, Girl! just before she died.