Lacrosse sees ‘learning and success’ in the future after 20-1 loss to Springfield

BY EMILY TARINELLI ’25 SPORTS EDITOR

Mount Holyoke Lacrosse suffered a 20-1 loss versus Springfield College on Saturday, April 1, at Springfield. Despite the defeat, team members kept their heads in the game and concentrated on the positive takeaways from the weekend.

“Although the score was not what we wanted, I’m still so proud of my teammates for facing a challenging opponent and staying tough during moments of adversity,” Hannah Bisson ’24 said. “We played a full 60 minutes of hard lacrosse, and we kept a positive attitude the entire game. We had great sportsmanship, and we had each other’s backs.” Springfield snagged 11 points in the first quarter of the game. After that, however, their goals dramatically decreased. Springfield scored four times in the second quarter and once in the third, which was also when Mount Holyoke’s Emi Bisson ’26 captured the Lyons’ only goal.

The Springfield Pride prevailed once and for all in the last quarter, securing an additional four points. Mount Holyoke’s goalkeeper Emma Tower ’25 made eight saves throughout the game.

“Defense was able to shut Springfield down, and we were able to force Springfield to run out their shot clock,” Hannah Bisson said.

Maddie Millyan ’25 said that the game was a learning experience that the team could capitalize on for future successes.

“Though the outcome of our game today at Springfield College isn’t what we had hoped for, it was a great stepping stone that brought us forward in our strength and bond as a team,” she said. “We could try new positions, focus on what we had been learning and improving on, and be each other’s biggest cheerleaders as we accomplished this. I definitely think we have more learning and success in the near future.”

Head Coach Anne O’Byrne also spoke about her outlook on the rest of the season to come.

“Not entirely surprising, Springfield is poised to land near the top of our conference this year and that fact can be intimidating even before the first draw. That said, despite being a young team in a year full of transition, we played hard, learned new lessons, made new mistakes and grew in defeat,” O’Byrne said.

“Our team is talented, and they’re hungry for success, so every loss and every setback is making them better and solidifying the foundation that we intend to build upon.”

Next up, the Lyons will play Babson College at home on Saturday, April 8, beginning at 1:00 p.m.

Weissman Center hosts Tahmima Anam Poetry to read: works by the 2023 Glascock contest judges

BY SOPHIE FRANK ’26 STAFF WRITER

On one of the warmest days in March, Mount Holyoke students and professors from many of the Five Colleges gathered in Hooker Auditorium for a conversation with Tahmima Anam, an award-winning author, New York Times columnist and Mount Holyoke alum from the class of 1997.

Anam described her visit as “incredibly moving and meaningful,” noting that the date of the event marked her return to Mount Holyoke exactly 30 years after her arrival in 1993.

The event was organized by the Weissman Center for Leadership in collaboration with Critical Social Thought, the Office of The President and the Five Colleges. Cindie Huerta ’25, a Weissman fellow, told Mount Holyoke News that events like this “allow for people to see the potential beyond Mount Holyoke.”

Anam began the talk by describing her journey to becoming an author.

She included stories of her Bangladeshi upbringing and her journey to Mount Holyoke. When she first arrived at the school, she was greeted at the airport by an international student welcoming committee. She described being drawn into the community immediately.

“You have this moment of intense connection when you’re here while you’re being pushed to be extraordinary,” she explained during the Launching Leadership conversation.

“This community is a really special place, and … going through [your] journey with this community is a real gift,” Anam said to Mount Holyoke News. “I hope [it] will be something that guides you through and gives you the strength to tackle whatever it is out in the world that you need to tackle.”

Anam, who majored in anthropology, said that up until meeting Mount Holyoke professors who had high standards but believed in her, she had never taken herself seriously. Anam had a secret wish to become a novelist and though she didn’t pursue her dream until after graduation, she says college and graduate school were great training for her writing. During the Launching Leadership talk she explained the connection between studying anthropology and her writing: “Anthropology is the study of otherness. Writing requires a deep understanding of otherness. The experience of otherness is fundamental to my being.”

During her Ph.D. research in anthropology at Harvard, Anam focused on the experiences of women during the war of independence in Bangladesh. She expected to hear stories about the war, but instead, the women talked about falling in love and their families, because it was a time when many social norms were cast aside. She learned from this that she was not interested in the “grandness of war,” but in the small, transformative moments between people.

Her anthropological research inspired the Bengal Trilogy. The books chronicle three generations of women in the same family throughout the history of Bangladesh, from the war of independence to the present day. The books were written from her heart for her family and for the country whose “rich, intellectual history” was revealed to her by a Mount Holyoke professor. “It was really the novel I had to write first,” she told Mount Holyoke Interim President Beverly Daniel Tatum. Her latest book, “The Startup

Wife,” is a big departure from her previous work in the Bengal Trilogy, though it is also based on life experiences — in this case, her job at a tech startup founded by her husband. While observing office culture and racism and sexism in tech, she began to speculate about how she would be treated if she was the founder of the company. The book wound up being a satirical social commentary about a married couple that works together on a sensational new app. Though the wife is the one who created it, the husband receives the praise and becomes an almost messiah-like figure.

The book also delves into her complex relationship with technology under capitalism, but she fondly recalls seeing young people in Bangladesh who believe they can change the world thanks to the interconnectedness technology allows. Ultimately, she believes “[technology] cannot be stopped, it can only be understood.”

In response to a student asking how to tell stories the world often ignores, Anam replied, “Your story is your power. Nobody else has that story.” Anam believes in the power of stories, of young people and of the Mount Holyoke community.

BY EMMA PLATT ’26 STAFF WRITER

The Glascock Poetry Contest took place last week during the first weekend of National Poetry Month and featured work by students from across New England. The competition was judged by poets Eileen Myles, Evie Shockley and Hoa Nguyen. These established poets read selections of their work on the Saturday of the competition, but could only showcase a small portion of their work. For those wishing to explore more of their poetry, here are three more works by these authors.

“Prophesy” by Eileen Myles

In this poem, Myles uses both humor and evocative and odd imagery to transport the reader into a strange world that Myles writes from. Down to their writing utensil being “the devil’s cock” which is like “a fat burnt crayon.” Myles uses the Devil as a clear reference to the personification of pure evil. The poem is in free verse and lacks punctuation except for one period in the middle.

Myles is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of UMass Boston. They have published twenty volumes of both poetry and prose fiction as well as art journalism and libretto work. They have received four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and several other accolades.

“her tin skin” by Evie Shockley

In this poem, Shockley writes about insecurity and wishing to be like another person on the surface. She wants the subject’s “tin skin,” which is repeated over and over in the poem. She describes the subject’s “militant barbie breast” and “mountainous” curves as things that she desires. Shockley writes about her own brownness as well: “i / want my brownness / to cover all but the silver / edges of my tin skin.”

A graduate of Northwestern University, the University of Michigan and Duke University, Shockley is from Nashville, Tennessee. She has had fellowships with Cave Canem, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. She has also been honored with the Holmes National Poetry Prize.

“Unused Baby” by Hoa Nguyen

In this poem, Nguyen writes with imagery from nature, folklore and religion to create a confusing but fascinating piece. She uses images of everything from blood to frogs to form strong images in the reader’s mind, drawing them in. This is similar to her general style of poetry, which poet Ocean Vuong once described as, “a poetics insistent on fragmentation and rupture as a mode of thinking and being in the world — one where, paradoxically, the very notion of fragmentation is, in itself, a whole. Her poems remind us that meaning, as we understand it, does not have to adhere to standard conventions of syntax.”

Nguyen was born in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, and grew up in the United States before settling in Canada where she now lives. She has written several books throughout her career and has been nominated for the Griffin Prize, Kingsley Tufts Award, National Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award. She has taught creative writing at the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as at community colleges.