Leaf Collection, 2026, from Clemson University Press
Winner of the 2025 Converse MFA Alumni Book Award, chosen by award-winning writer and editor, Anita Skeen, professor emerita, and former director of the Center for Poetry at Michigan State University.
These poems present snapshots of forms we associate with nature – trees, seasons, birds, insects, mothers – but what makes it into each frame isn’t really familiar. Plants, flowers, and leaves are not the still-life subject of odes, nor are they the setting for paradise but rather a universe unto themselves, wholly indifferent to human viewers. Readers may find they need to consult an illustrated guide to trees or reevaluate their attitude towards spiders. Leaf Collection cycles through the seasons and generations in search of any meaning to be made in a world where the human protagonist is not the star of the show but rather one word in a much longer sentence. The voice within these poems finds both blessing and cruelty in nature, salvation in decay. Because “that which destroys what we’ve built is also what saves us.”
Hannah Marshall’s Leaf Collection gives us a meditation on trees-from the “real” to a pine forest painted on a Sunday School wall. Douglas fir, mahogany, birch, Norway maple, sycamore, hawthorn, redcedar, hickory, elm, fir, Catalpa willows, cottonwoods, and Hophornbeam are rendered with dazzling clarity as Marshall speaks through four generations of mothers and daughters. Her precision of language retains the mysteries of human experience. Metaphors abound for the “American Chestnut” and environmental decimation is evident in a sonnet about microplastics. Marshall is a modern day Eve-the fruit she eats “a mile, a thousand /miles from the tree.”
-Denise Duhamel, author of Second Story, distinguished American poet and educator.
Hannah Marshall’s Leaf Collection dazzles with imagery, intellect, and song. She writes “Along the house foundation, dirt / instructs the leaves in the art of decay.” The poem “Snow” begins “how blue a road seems / in winter sunlight // the way the days end / before we understand them.” With stunning maturity and depth, Marshall presents a world rich in both fecundity and decay, crystalline clarity and mystery. She observes “In microarthropods and caterpillars / munching leaf decay, / in nematodes and protozoa, / clay layers like filo, God is.” She writes of her aged grandmother, “She turns to my nine-year-old daughter / and says my name.” Hannah. Hannah Marshall. Remember this name.
-Suzanne Cleary, author of The Odds
Hannah Marshall’s fascinating debut volume of poems called Leaf Collection is a vivid introduction to a life, a mind, and a way of seeing the world. If the title makes you think of a grade school project of collecting leaves, here you’ll find an adult world more complex than that, one full of surprises, careful descriptions of urban and rural scenes, lovely exhilarating moments of freedom and joy, as well as notes of concern for the environment and our world today. Marshall’s mind is a probing, careful, precise one where the writer may try out the point of view of an apple-surprise!-namely, an apple watching from a bowl a human in the nearby room loading the dishwasher. Or the poem’s speaker may think of herself as a red stick pin, able and willing to walk her way into a map of the world. These poems beckon and encourage us: come along on this journey. Readers will enjoy the many nuances of relationships, inheritances, and types of faith that it takes to survive our complex world.
-Patricia Clark, Professor Emerita of Writing, Grand Valley State University, author of seven books of poetry, most recently O Lucky Day.
Anthology
“This Is a Love Poem To Trees,” The Best American Poetry 2021, edited by David Lehman and Tracy K. Smith
Awards
2025 Converse Alumni Book Prize, Winner, Leaf Collection
2024 Margo LaGattuta Memorial Award, Second Place, “Sagittarius A*”
2024 Poetry Society of Michigan Contest: Love, Second Place, “Cooking for Me”
2024 Poetry Society of Michigan Contest: Women and Science, Third Place, “Stratus”
2024 Jude P. Dunbar Memorial Prize, Honorable Mention, “Sift”
2023 Converse Alumni Book Prize Finalist, The Shape Good Can Take
2022 Pushcart Prize nomination, “Headline, 4-6-22,” Hong Kong Review, Vol III, No 3
2022 Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition, Second Place, “Again and Again”
2021 St. Lawrence Book Award Finalist, The Shape Good Can Take
2020 Pushcart Prize nomination, “Joy,” Sweet, Issue 12.3
Read My Poems Online
“Book of Shapes,” “Nimbostratus,” and “Ode to Mineral Orange,” Poetry is Currency, August 2024
“I Was a Geode,” Atlanta Review, Fall 2023
“The Hill,” 100 Word Story, May 2023
“Division, Spring,” “Cottonwood Music,” and “Treasure,” The Bombay Literary Magazine, Issue 54
“Fable in which you are a barn animal and I am a carnivore,” Four Way Review, Issue 26
“Atlas of Being,” Pangyrus LitMag, February 28, 2023
“In the Beginning, Forest,” Booth, January 6, 2023
“Headline, 4-6-22,” Hong Kong Review, Vol III, No 3
“Incorruptible” and “How To Be Saved, If You Are a Body,” Delta Poetry Review, Vol 4, Issue 12
“Birth Story IV,” Black Fork Review, Issue 6
“For the Intercession of St. Therese of Lisieux,” Hole in the Head Review, v3n2
“False Cedar” and “Waning Crescent,” BoomerLitMag, Vol VI, No. 4
“Prayer to the Dead,” The Summerset Review, Winter 2022
“Watching a House Renovation Show” and “The World,” New Ohio Review, 2021 Online Winter Exclusive
“Allegiance” and “The Moth,” The American Journal of Poetry, Volume 11
“Grandmother Dee” and “A History of My Pew,” Revolute, Volume .002
“Snacking,” Glassworks Magazine: Flash Glass 2021
“Community Garden, Wisconsin, 9 Months Pregnant,” Tiny Seed Literary Journal, December 19, 2020
“Even This Fragility,” West Trade Review, Winter 2020
“Poise,” featured on Poetry Daily on March 15, 2020
“Joy,” Sweet, Issue 12.3
“Before Flight,” “Dream Therapy,” and “For the Makers,” North Dakota Quarterly, Volume 87.1/2
“The Seed,” RipRap Literary Journal, Volume 41
“Alchemy,” “Orpah Running Free,” and “Siberian Squill,” Dappled Things, Mary Queen of Angels 2018
“Native Body, ” Noctua Review, Volume X: Neo/Americana
“Piety,” Dappled Things, SS. Peter and Paul 2016
“Speaking with the Maple” and “Woman, Kind,” The Madison Review, Fall 2015
Journals
“Sagittarius A*,” “Sift,” “Cooking for Me,” and “Stratus,” Peninsula Poets, Contest Edition, Fall 2024
“Slumber Party” and “A Scan of the Beating Heart,” Illumen, Autumn 2024
“Call It Peace,” Sugar House Review, Issue 28
“Diminishing Returns,” Reed Magazine, Issue 156
“Birth Story, Three Ways,” Open Minds Quarterly, Volume 24, Issue 4
“Fulton Street Cemetery” and “Plots,” Hallowzine, Issue 3
“Birth Story I,” I-70 Review, Summer/Fall, 2022
“Lost Touch,” “2020 Falls,” and “March,” Capsule Stories Second Isolation Edition
“Hide,” Plainsongs, Summer 2021
“We Were Naked, We Were Horses,” South Carolina Review, Volume 53.2
“The Crossing,” Inkwell Journal, Issue 36
“Achsah Considers Writing to her Father,” Dunes Review, Volume 25 Issue 1
“After Psalm 136,” The Windhover, Volume 25.1
“A Loath Convert Questions the Virgin Mother” and “To the Dance In Me,” Kestrel, Issue 44: Winter 2020-2021
“Empty Tables,” Fearsome Critters – The Quaranzine
“This is a Love Poem to Trees,” New Ohio Review, Volume 27
“Poise,” “Seatbelt,” and “To Give Comfort to Those who Sit in Prosperity and in the Apathy of Wealth (An Inventory),” Rock & Sling, Vox II: American Identities
“The Siege of Jerusalem, AD 70,” “Boys,” and “Bringing my Mother Home for the Last Time,” Chiron Review, Issue 110, Winter 2017
“Desertion,” Hummingbird, Volume 27, Number 2
“A Woman Examines her Strength,” The Phoenix Soul, Inner Truth
“Habitation,” “Sophomore,” and “To Dust,” Metonym, Issue 7
“Reasons Why You Love Me,” The Phoenix Soul, Messy Grace
“Spring Cleaning,” Hummingbird, Volume 27, Number 1
“Raft,” Big Muddy, Issue 16.2
“El Shaddai” and “Feathers,” Minerva Rising, Issue 10: Body Image
“Night Afloat,” Hummingbird, Volume 26, Number 1
“Salmon and Child,” Stoneboat, Issue 6.2
“Off We Go,” Wisconsin Review, Issue 48.1
“Old Stories,” The Phoenix Soul, Legacy
“Mystic,” The Phoenix Soul, Unity
“Bike Ride,” The Phoenix Soul, Comfort
“Thoughts after I forgot the granola in the oven while watching Grey’s Anatomy,” The Phoenix Soul, Revolution
“Answering,” Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2015
“Hallowed Be This Bread,” Sprout Online Magazine, Savor
“Counting Waters Before I Sleep,” Sprout Online Magazine, Wander
“What Mattered Most,” Sprout Online Magazine, Discover
“The Stripping,” Rock & Sling, Issue 9.1
Articles
Raised in Clay (read free online), Ceramics Monthly.
Paul Eshelman’s Handled Soup Bowl (read free online), Pottery Making Illustrated
Book Section
“Paul Eshelman’s Handled Soup Bowl.” Clay & Cuisine: Techniques for the Studio, Recipes for the Kitchen, Ed. Holly Goring. The American Ceramic Society, 2017.
Hannah Marshall 