About Aza Pace
Aza Pace is the author of the poetry collection Her Terrible Splendor (Willow Springs Books, 2025), which won the Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize. Her poems appear in The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, Tupelo Quarterly, Crazyhorse, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She is the winner of two Academy of American Poets University Prizes and holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD from the University of North Texas. She currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Website: azapace.com
Instagram: @aza.pace
A Profile of the Author
Notes on “31”
Like many of my recent poems, “31” began with observing something striking in the natural world: the largest group of vultures I had ever seen, circling slowly above me on my morning walk. This, paired with thoughts on not having children, gave the poem its start. I reflected on the ways that we humans often speak dismissively or cruelly of people and animals who cannot or do not reproduce. I had recently turned thirty-one, the age at which my mother had me, and I was intrigued by the idea that I might be experiencing the world and myself in much the same way that she did then. To me, it is powerful to imagine anything into being. I also wanted to refuse the easy metaphorical reading of the vultures as symbols of death and instead read them as evidence of exuberant life. The poem felt like an act of revision at the level of symbol and of self-understanding.
Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.
Especially when I’m working toward a new group of poems, I try to be creative in other ways too. Lately, that means baking sourdough and soda bread, gathering supplies for a small collage project, and studying other languages. I’ve been slowly teaching myself Scottish Gàidhlig for a few years, and I love the feeling when a new word or idea clicks into place, as if I’ve opened a door onto a new room in my brain. Also, one of my favorite comforts is curling up on the sofa to watch birds out the window with my dog. When I saw that his name at the shelter was Max, the same as my childhood dog, I took it as a sign, and now he’s my sweetest corgi-faced friend.
