Luci Shaw: A Poet Remembers Her Mentor

by Dawn Morrow

Luci Shaw, poet, author, publisher, and friend of the Rabbit Room died on December 1, 2025 at 96 years old. Luci was the author of more than 30 books of poetry and prose. Dawn Morrow, a Rabbit Room poet wrote this reflection upon the passing of her friend and mentor.

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As I sit down to write, I remember the words of the email Luci Shaw sent me when I was lamenting the long, hard grind of writing poems:

I’ve been doing this for the last fifty years and it gets no easier. Patience and grit and intense attention to the realities of living and creating set us on a stony path. Now and then a glimmer of light.

Do not stop what you are doing! Read lots of good poets. Keep the writing going. Your poems speak to the realism of our strange universe and God is there at the heart of it.

Someone once told me writers should imagine their audience and write to them. When I write, Luci Shaw is in the front row.

The first time I met Luci, I knew two things about her:

1. She was a writer of poetry I had never read, and

2. Madeleine L’Engle had been her best friend.

She was the keynote speaker at the Rabbit Room’s 2014 Hutchmoot. Though she only needed to be there for the keynote, she asked to attend the entire weekend and by some fluke, I ended up sitting next to her at dinner. I couldn’t tell you the content of our conversation, but I do know for sure that I was surprised and delighted when Luci pulled up the sleeve of her shirt and revealed the fairly fresh tattoo on her upper arm. I can say for certain that Luci colored that conversation with wit and light because that’s who she was.

Two years later, at Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing, I heard that Luci Shaw and Jeanne Murray-Walker would be leading a poetry workshop in Kodiak, Alaska. “I guess I’m going to Alaska,” I said to the friend next to me. And I did.

That week Luci became my mentor and my friend. She spent most of our workshops knitting, pausing occasionally to look up and deliver brilliant, incisive critique to the poet in the hot seat. Eventually she turned that bright mind (not to mention those bright eyes) of hers on me:

“You are a poet,” she told me. “You’re a one-trick pony right now, but you can learn more tricks.”

Some years later, I was preparing to graduate with my Master of Fine Arts, and I sent Luci some of my recent poems. “Look!” I wrote, “I’m not a one-trick pony anymore!” She responded, “You’re right! You’re not a one-trick pony anymore! Now you’re a one-trick horse!”

Luci never pulled a punch in her critique, but she delivered it with deep love and care for my work. Her support was unwavering. She came to my MFA graduate reading and graduation. Although she knew a number of people affiliated with the program, I heard her tell more than one person, “I’m here for Dawn!” Later, she encouraged me to put my first book together and wrote the first endorsement.

But I am not the only one to encounter Luci like this. She engaged with each piece with the same generous attention and grace, and any writer who met her would tell you the same.

Luci Shaw was in her 80s when I met her but she was never old. I will miss her energy. I will miss her wisdom. I will miss the way she spoke so tenderly about her first husband, Harold, and her fierce devotion to her second husband, John. I will miss her laughter and her hugs and hearing her British accent calling my name across a parking lot because it’s the first time we’ve seen each other in a while.

In grad school we considered the idea that poets are in dialogue with each other across generations, batting ideas back and forth like children with a balloon. Luci will continue to be one of my best dialogue partners. I hear the echoes of her voice in my poems and I am so deeply grateful for the time I had with her.

Sounds Like Lace

by Dawn Morrow

When Luci wrote of the ebbtide:
sounds like lace, I thought
of early mornings, shorefront,
bare feet on wet sand,
my uncles on the pier casting lines
or pulling up crab traps full
of clicking claws we’d throw
in a pot of boiling water
‘til they came to the color
of the sun on the bay side
of the island. This year
seems like the tide has gone
out so far, it’s uncovered
all the lost things swept
to sea: seaweed tangled
in rusted gears; a mangled
mess of crushed-up shell,
remains of seagull snacks;
and here and there, the bright
blue glint of sea glass,
edges worn smooth, frosted
by years of tides, the water
swaying like a woman
who dances to the memory
of a song she used to know. 

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Dawn Morrow is a poet and author who holds an MFA from Seattle Pacific University. Although she also holds a BS in Engineering from the University of Iowa and an MBA from UNC–Chapel Hill, she’s a Jersey Girl at heart. When she’s not writing, you can find her stage-managing musicals at a local theater. Her poetry has appeared in Molehill, vol. 5, published by Rabbit Room Press, and in SLAB Literary Magazine.