Celebrating Emerging Poets

April is National Poetry Month, a celebration created 25 years ago to highlight the integral role poets and poetry play in our culture. In celebration, we caught up with MFA Creative Writing Program Director Sheila Squillante to see what poetry means to her, and read some work from Chatham’s emerging poets.

MFA Creative Writing Program Director Sheila Squillante

"I think humans, as a species, want to be heard, seen, understood for who we are. Poetry illuminates—it shines a light from inside us (our desires, anxieties) and, when it finds a ready reader, mirror-like, back at us. It’s like a mega-dose of vitamin D in the middle of a gloomy Pittsburgh day. We can bask inside it and feel our cells repair themselves one at a time."

Arista Engineer ‘22, MFACW (she/her)

Arista Rawat Engineer is a poet and fiction writer whose work explores questions that arise from the confluence of different worlds—modernity and tradition, language and culture, myth and literature, etc. Her poems have been published in the anthology, "A Letter, A Poem, A Home." She is a first-year student at Chatham's MFA program. She is from Pune, India and loves being in Pittsburgh because she's always lived in places that begin with a "P"!

Cedric Rudolph ‘18, MFACW (he/him)

Cedric Rudolph moved to Pittsburgh, PA, in 2016. After two years at Chatham University, he earned his MFA in Poetry. He is currently in his third year of teaching fiction and poetry to middle and high school writers at the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts school (CAPA). He is one of two 2021 Emerging Black Writers-in-Residence at Chatham. His poems are published in Coal Hill Review, Christianity and Literature Journal, The Laurel Review, and the Santa Fe Literary Review.  

Finn Flood ‘22, Creative Writing (he/him)

Finn Flood is a rising senior pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing. He grew up and spent most of his life growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, where his passion for literature and writing blossomed. His genre of choice is poetry; however, he also has written fiction, creative nonfiction, and philosophy. Some of his favorite poets include Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Ilya Kaminsky, and Garcia Lorca.

Juliette Lopez ‘22, Creative Writing and Communications (she/her)

Juliette Lopez is a creative writer that specializes in both poetry and memoir. She is currently working on her undergraduate degree at Chatham University, where she has six poems published in the university's literary art journal, The Minor Bird. Though her creative work is her primary form of writing, Lopez has a strong background in journalism: writing for media, lifestyle, and news. She has multiple stories published in her university's newspaper the Communique, in which she writes lifestyle pieces. With the use of flowery language and themes of innocence juxtaposed with trauma, Lopez's personal work is both lyrical and disturbing to read. Throughout her writing, she takes a deep dive into her childhood and reflects on her past through the present. Through the constant mix of past and present tenses, the timeline, setting, and overall feel of her work, Lopez takes an interesting take on what it means to learn and reflect. For a deeper look at her work, check out her Instagram page @juliette.lopezz or reach out to her at juliette.lopez@chatham.edu.

View more work from Chatham poets of past and present here! Learn more about Chatham’s MFA and BFA in Creative Writing.