Description

Finalist, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2026

The Field Mouse’s Child

by Penelope Scambly Schott

The Field Mouse’s Child is a collection of tiny poems that describe a mouse, a 4-year-old girl, plum preserves, death, starlight, and other small but intense moments of discovery.

 

Early Praise

Some experts claim that small poems are more difficult to write than long ones. In The Field Mouse’s Child: 30 Very Small Poems, Penelope Scambly Schott handles that difficulty with ease. Her bite-size poems reveal her talent for balancing the humorous with the serious and the personal with the universal, mostly in poems of only two to eight lines long—or should I say short?

Although each poem can be read quickly, readers will want to return to them again and again to savor their vivid imagery as well as the insights of an astute observer of human nature. For example, the poet uses the transformation of a hummingbird into a wild turkey as a metaphor for a changing relationship. Then she addresses the theme of grief in a buttercup field that has become a battlefield.

“Witty and wise” are small descriptors of Schott’s latest collection. Readers will delight in both qualities and remain amazed by the intensity of each poem.

–– Carolyn Martin, author of Brainstorming

When it comes to Penelope Schott’s The Field Mouse’s Child, 30 Very Small Poems, small is mighty especially when the pen is in the hand of this poet. You’ll be brought to attention, have your breath stolen when reading these lyrical and impeccably crafted poems. Join Schott in contemplating the end of things and the beginning of something else “or not,” as she writes. In apprehending the unforgiveable beauty and import of the small, elegant gestures of nature, she puts our insatiable human yearnings in their proper place. We’ve come to know this poet as one who doesn’t suffer fools, as activist, mischief-maker, lover of nature. Now, evidenced in this heady mix of those hallmarks, add seer to the list.

I was so lonesome being human, before I knew that Now,
though discontinuous,
is always with us

—Ellen Waterston, Oregon Poet Laureate, author of As Far as I Can Anthem

 

About the Author

Penelope Scambly Schott lives, writes, and leads poetry workshops in the small town of Dufur (population: 640), second largest town in Wasco County, Oregon. Most recent books include On Dufur Hill and Waving Fly Swatters at Angels. Penelope is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for A Is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, a book-length poetic narrative. The Field Mouse’s Child is something different: most poems in this little collection run between 2 and 8 lines—much like field mice who never grow past 3 or 4 inches long, whiskers to tip of the tail.

Her other books include:
November Quilt (2nd Place, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2018)
Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman
gOD: A Respectfully Divergent Testament