ELIZABETH SPIRES is the author of four books of poetry, including Globe (Wesleyan, 1981), Annonciade (Viking, 1989), and Worldling (Norton, 1995). Swan's Island, her second collection, was originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1985. Her awards and honors include the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sara Teasdale Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Baltimore and is Writer in Residence at Groucher College.