Angela Acosta ’17
Alumnae Poet
Angela Acosta (she/her) is a bilingual Latina poet who grew up in Florida. She is beginning a position as an assistant professor of Spanish contemporary literature and culture at the University of South Carolina, Columbia starting in August 2024. She majored in English and Spanish with a translation studies concentration while at Smith, and she holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish (Iberian Studies) from The Ohio State University. She is a 2022 Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers Finalist, 2022 Somos en Escrito Extra-Fiction Contest Honorable Mention, and Rhysling finalist. Her writing has appeared in Shoreline of Infinity, Apparition Lit, Radon Journal, and Space & Time. She is author of the Elgin nominated speculative poetry collections Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Publishing, 2022) and A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness: Poems of a Fabled Universe (Red Ogre Review, 2023). Her research, teaching, and creative writing focus on recovering the legacies of early twentieth century Spanish women writers by providing new poems, translations, and analyses of their work.
Select Poems
I am among the earthbound,
ensconced within this terrestrial ecosystem
never to set foot on another planet.
I am in good company
among the billions who inhabit spaceship Earth.
All of humanity’s saints and sinners
lay under my feet,
covered in plants grown with the energy of Sol.
I have no option to leave,
no near-light speed travel, no hypersleep,
pr the cold grip of the metal harness on my first off-world shuttle.
What awaits our descendants in space
requires careful planning,
repairs and reparations,
to heal the Earth for our descendants.
May our children inherit the Earth,
with its rich biomes and herds roaming the prairies,
while a few brave souls sample alien oceans light years away.
If the Earth is truly an oasis in space,
then may we the Earthbound keep it safe,
may it not merely be a hovel of misery
of the unfortunate and underprivileged,
but a viable option gifted from our ancestors.
Acknowledgements: This poem first appeared in The Blue Moth.
I am among the earthbound,
ensconced within this terrestrial ecosystem
never to set foot on another planet.
I am in good company
among the billions who inhabit spaceship Earth.
All of humanity’s saints and sinners
lay under my feet,
covered in plants grown with the energy of Sol.
I have no option to leave,
no near-light speed travel, no hypersleep,
pr the cold grip of the metal harness on my first off-world shuttle.
What awaits our descendants in space
requires careful planning,
repairs and reparations,
to heal the Earth for our descendants.
May our children inherit the Earth,
with its rich biomes and herds roaming the prairies,
while a few brave souls sample alien oceans light years away.
If the Earth is truly an oasis in space,
then may we the Earthbound keep it safe,
may it not merely be a hovel of misery
of the unfortunate and underprivileged,
but a viable option gifted from our ancestors.
Acknowledgements: This poem first appeared in The Blue Moth.