author, poet, and actress

Judith Partelow

Welcome to my website!

Upcoming readings and events

NEIGHBORS STAGED READING! Monday, January 20th, 2025 (MLK Day and Inauguration Day) 7 pm at the 204 Sisson Rd., Harwich Cultural Arts Municipal Building! Free, but donations will be welcome.
Judith Partelow has lived on Cape Cod for over 40 years. Her poetry has been published in numerous compilations. Her most recent book is Passion & Provocation, Selected Poems by Judith Partelow is available on Amazon. Her chapbooks include A Woman’s Heart, and Carry Me Back, A Woman’s Life in Poetry. Her first play is entitled, A Woman’s Heart. Her most recent play, a collaboration with other writers, is entitled NEIGHBORS! She is an actress, playwright, and director. www.judithpartelow.com

I am Judith Partelow

-Read the Provincetown Magazine article-

POET A Woman’s Heart – First chapbook of poetry released in 2014. Carry Me Back, A Woman’s Life in Poetry – Second chapbook published by Scargo Hill Poets in 2019.

PASSION & PROVOCATION – Selected Poems by Judith Partelow is being released on February 14th, 2024 by Atmosphere Press on Amazon.com. This is a comprehensive collection of her poetry — from the previous two chapbooks, as well as many new poems. The book may also be ordered via the ISBN #: 979-8-89132-179-3 as of February 14th, 2024.

“It is rare indeed that I find a poetry collection so relevant to life with emotions that are captured with such passion and clarity. This is a treasury of life experiences. Here are poems for the people, written from the heart, reflections of deep sorrow and joy engraved in one’s soul. As one reads through this, it recalls pivotal times in one’s own experience. It covers the spectrum of a lifetime – from the beginnings, through first love, motherhood, family, loss, longings, the spark of renewed love; through the fear and vulnerability of losing oneself to another, rebuilding love and recognizing spiritual bonds. These vignettes, a distillation of passion and pain, trigger one’s own experiences from the well of the subconscious. Judith Partelow speaks from the heart and shines a light into the soul. She captures the fragility of life. She conveys complex emotional experiences with clarity and makes poetry accessible even to the uninitiated. This collection is truly a treasure."

Judith Partelow’s poetry collection, Passion & Provocation, is a must-read for any woman who has lived and loved. Her voice will sound as familiar as your own with its yearnings, triumphs, regrets and humor, a voice that speaks from the “inside out” about a woman’s life today.

Judith Partelow’s latest book, Passion and Provocation, is a rich compilation of poems about the many phases of womanhood from first longings to marriage, to old age. She uses musical language that sings her emotions: “Tropical ma-an/pulsates to a calypso beat/with tropical wo-man/in syncopated rhythm.” In a tender moment, the author ponders the life of a mother: “Moistened fingers clinging to our hair/play a fiddle tune/an endless tune/we dance to all our lives.” She chronicles past relationships, old loves and new, while drawing the reader in with sensual images that celebrate her children and her own younger self. The poems at the end of her book, wise and sometimes heartbreaking, depict places such as Mariupol “under smoke and flaming skies” or oncology waiting rooms. These are poems to savor for their astonishing beauty and contemplative vision.

"...they (Judith Partelow's poems) are very powerful and enormously intimate in that strange way when something the author feels is also felt by the reader. I felt a punch to the gut a couple of times when I had a wince of recognition - 'this very thing has happened to me!' I find in these poems a lot of strength but also a lot of vulnerability, with flashes of humor and moments of compassion"

“With this collection of selected poems, Partelow has taken the threads of woman’s existence and woven them into a vivid tapestry of a life richly lived, poetry that is poignant and passionate, revealing and brave."

One of the things I love about poetry books is that they don’t have to be read sequentially, but this collection is worth reading from front to back, as themes emerge on their own as well as connections between poems, small links that weave a context to the whole.

…there’s a definite flow to this collection. Not just through Partelow’s themes—domesticity, love, loss, memory, and on to places and spirituality—but through her voice itself, which is warm and personal through all the various stories these poems tell.

Passion and Provocation is indeed both: the poet’s expression of her passion, her life stages and events, the spaces she’s filled with people and memories… and in the process provoking in readers echoing recollections and connections. It’s a compilation that will resonate in minds and hearts after the poems themselves have been long since read, a celebratory, intimate study of one life and all the lives that have touched it.

Dear Judith,
I've been reading your poetry and enjoying your thoughtful observations of life's many challenges, blessings, losses and gifts, everything from losing a love, and mourning a poor squirrel, to reflecting on how a much traveled suitcase, while replaced by newer models, still reminds one of old memories. Your poems reflect so many intimate details of living, loving and losing and retrieving, yearning for that infinite something and giving one's all.

PLAYWRIGHT
A WOMAN’S HEART, the play, was created from Judith Partelow’s poetry and was produced six times from 2017 through 2019 with producer Janet Murphy Robertson of artistsandmusicians.org at The Jacob Sears Library and the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis; for the Women’s International
Playwrights’ Festival in Provincetown; at the Cape Cod Cultural Center in South Yarmouth; and at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT), all to
standing ovations. A musical version of the play was adapted from the original with musician Dana McCoy and produced at the Cotuit Center for the Arts Black Box for twelve sold-out performances in 2019. The play was taught as a course at Cape Cod Community College by Professor Rod Owens as part of the Academy of Lifelong Learning in 2018. One quote from that class by Catherine Kelly-Mahon (author): “Shakespeare gave us the Ages of Man; now Partelow gives us the Ages of Woman” Also, “A Woman’s Heart is the truth of human experience expressed in beautiful poetry”

“A beautifully and poetically written celebration of life in all its seasons, this play glides between the different ages of its actors. The actors speak in a narrative fashion, which gives the writing its universal weight. The ebbs and flows remind me of what makes the English language beautiful, and also echo classical tones. Many of the images do evoke the baby boomers generation but the reach of this play is wide enough to include any age audience. Partelow has very successfully combined poetry and script and redefined both within the world of her play. ”

Donna Gordon

NEIGHBORS! Her second play had staged readings in September 2022 at the Cotuit Center for the Arts with over 100 people in attendance, and at the Wellfleet Preservation Hall in December 2023 with close to the same number. They were then called back to do an additional performance for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on January 15, 2024. Other planned work-in-progress performances will be on Indigenous Peoples Weekend, October 11, 12, 13 2024 at the Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second Street, East Cambridge, MA. NEIGHBORS addresses the impact of racism in our society and has been received with great acclaim. Scenes from the play are available to be used in schools, churches, or organizations to stimulate discussion about racism. The play was developed under a grant from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod. The NEIGHBORS logo was created by Robin J. Miller.

More about Judith Partelow's Creative Works

She has been a featured poet on numerous occasions, including a 2016 Alzheimer’s Benefit; Writers’ Night Out of the Cape Cod Writers Center; the Cultural Center of Cape Cod where she has also been a long-time participant in their Mutual Muses exhibit; ; in Wellfleet for Barry Hellman’s National Poetry Month; for Neil Silberblatt’s Voices of Poetry in Chatham and Brewster; Provincetown’s Writers’ Cafe; at the Brewster Ladies’ Library; at the Dennis Memorial Library as founder and member of the Scargo Hill Poets; the Cotuit Center for the Arts in Kami Lyle’s Sit Awhile; and at the Cape Cod Theatre Company in Harwich along with poet Charles Harper. She has been interviewed for cable TV programs: the Cape Cod Writers Center’s Books and the World, by Madeleine Miele Holt; by Deb Hoch for A Woman’s Outlook, Seekonk TV; Provincetown cable tv; as well as WOMR-FM programs with Pandora Peoples and Candace Hammond. Her poems have won awards in the WOMR Outermost Poetry Contests, Veterans for Peace, and Katharine Lee Bates poetry contests, among others. She’s been published in various publications including magazines, newspapers, books and on radio. Partelow is an actress and director who has appeared in numerous theatrical productions, readings, and films over the years. She is a featured character in the cable series Offseason, created by Nathan Butera of Provincetown, and streamed on Amazon Prime. She is a member of Screen Actors’ Guild and Actors Equity.
Partelow is on the board of the Cape Cod Writers Center. Her poetry has been published in compilations including: Cape Women On-Line; Voices from A Borrowed Garden; Spiritual Mothering Journal; A Sense of Place; World of Water, World of Sand; Baha’i Anthology on Martyrs; The City of the Covenant News; The Norwalk News; Baha’i Vizier and Lines of Fracture (translated into Dutch); Baha’i World Volumes; Brilliant Star Magazine; Katharine Lee Bates Collections 2013/2014; Veterans for Peace 2013; The Cape Cod Times: Albert Oubochowsky’s. play, Black Thursday; Slant, A Journal of Poetry; and From the Farther Shore, Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry. Her poem Bedtime Story was awarded second place by Marge Piercy in the Cape Cod division of the WOMR Outermost Poetry Contest of 2014, and Summer’s Harvest received Honorable Mention in that same contest for 2021. Her many achievements with poetry won her the Cape Cod Writers’ Conference Kevin V. Symmons Scholarship for Second Career Writers at its 2018 conference.
She is married to writer Thom Slayter and has lived on Cape Cod in Massachusetts for over forty years. She has three children, six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. She is a member of the Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.) that raises scholarship money for furthering women’s education. She is a member of the Baha’i Faith and is available for speaking engagements to present its teachings. She is also available for poetry readings and various dramatic readings. Contact judithpartelow@gmail.com.

A couple of poems for reading

Summer’s Harvest

My tomato plant is the harvest
of this summer’s quarantine —
the first fruit I’ve grown
in my seventy years:
a tangible pleasure.

I cradle the pot like a baby
from porch to kitchen
to capture the sun;
water and speak to it
with loving encouragement.

It listens and bears first red —
then, when no longer
ample sunshine
to make it blush —
green tomatoes.

I pluck the largest
most gracefully shaped
to slice and fry
enriching my dinner
with luscious umami.
A pungent aroma
rises from the leaves
when abruptly picked
as if to say,
“ouch!”

The young green ones
line up submissively
along my windowsill
to ripen
under my care.
It’s grown tall
over the summer
like schoolboys do.
It yields such delight
for most all my senses.

I wish I could hear it grow
in the silence of the night.

Revised from Tomato Plant, Oct. 30, 2020 that was printed in the CCT
This version won HM in Joe Gouveia WOMR poetry contest – Marge Piercy, judge – announced in Feb. 2021

One Summer's Day

I threw my blanket
boldly on the ground
spread wide
to show its many colors.

Then in some peculiar rage
you whipped it up
and spun it round
mocking its display.

I forgave the rage
with equal rage
that loves
but the blanket is now shut away.

Perhaps one corner at a time
I’ll reveal the fine design or
on anniversaries more —

but I cannot fling it wide again
to let you
at its core.

– Judith Partelow