About Judith
Judith Chibante returned to her early interest in creative writing after a varied career in education during which she taught poetry in K-12 schools and edited a volume of poetry for teachers; later, she achieved a full professorship in teacher education. Inspiration for her writing is anything that provokes, inspires, annoys, stirs, amuses or soothes. Her poems have been published in regional and international journals, and anthologized in publications of the Ina Coolbrith Circle. A first chapbook, Radio In the Night, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Currently, she is working on a manuscript for her first full volume of poems.
Readers of her poems will come to know her as a cancer survivor and care-giver to others, as well as a kind observer of everyday life and the aging process—all shot through (mostly) with a bit of humor. As in…
Learning to Box at 60
Maybe this is what I’ve needed all along.
Hands encased in steak-sized gloves,
working to keep the fists up, guard my face.
Then there’s the footwork: feint from the hips,
keep up a boogie of now here, now there.
So when my new lover is Instagrammed
with a beer in one hand, a hot sweetie
in the other, I duck that incoming jab
with a kiss for the guy on the next barstool
who asks if I’d like to dance, and I say,
Doing that already, dude.
Humor First Place Award
Ina Coolbrith Circle, 2020
Credentials
B.A. English, LaVerne College, LaVerne CA
M.A. Education, California State University, Fresno
Ed.D. Curriculum & Instruction, University of the Pacific, Stockton CA
Post-Doc Studies, Early Literacy Intervention, The Ohio State University
Professor Emerita, The California State University
Affiliations
Academy of American Poets
Ina Coolbrith Circle (Bay Area)
California State Parks Foundation
CSU-Emeriti, Retired Faculty and Staff Association
