Impossible Bottle Poems - Southern Messenger Poets Author:Claudia Emerson Claudia Emerson published six poetry collections with LSU Press, including Late Wife, Secure the Shadow, and The Opposite House. A professor of English and member of the creative writing faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Emerson served as the poet laureate of Virginia and won numerous awards for teaching and writing?includ... more »ing the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry?before her death in 2014.« less