For years I wrote around the edges of two careers and motherhood. At fifty, I began what would be a long series of first-person narrative poems of historical figures, mostly women whose stories we know but who have not been allowed to speak for themselves. In other poems I explore current events, grief, memories of my native Arkansas and nature as emanant.

 I first befriended poetry in high school when an iconoclast teacher taught Plath and poem writing instead of the standard American lit survey. She was fired; I was fired up. Thanks to another teacher and Smith College’s rare book collection of original works, I later fell for William Blake, then Eliot, Frost and Dickinson–and writing.

 In my first career teaching literature and writing at Phillips Exeter Academy, I was inspired by my colleague Dolores Kendrick, a prolific writer and later poet laureate of Washington D. C.  

 I now live near the Massachusetts shore, where I write, sing, practice Tai Chi and enjoy the fellowship of area writers.