I didn’t start writing poems until after I was thirty, after college, marriage and the birth of four daughters, when a friend and I wandered into a poetry reading at the local library. Reading led to writing poems, studying in community workshops, and then later taking workshops in the MFA program at Indiana University while I worked on a doctorate in instructional systems technology. Shaun Farragher worked as a poet in the schools in South Carolina and taught community workshops where I began to learn. Then I spent a year in MFA workshops at Indiana University with Maura Stanton who has remained a touchstone throughout the time I have written. Reading W.S. Merwin was an inspiration and freed me from punctuation. I was born and grew up in the Midwest but have found new ecologies for poems in the Deep South where I have lived for the past twenty-five years.

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Click here to read the Author’s Interview from adelaidebooks.org