The Artful Word

I’m lucky---I’ve spent much of my life doing different things that have ultimately led me to this place.  I’ve been a student of the sciences, a working artist, an artist-in-residence in a small elementary school, a poet, and for the last fifteen years....a teacher in public schools.

Over the last several years, as I've worked hard at teaching in some very challenging school settings, I have missed those other pieces of myself--

“...the way it feels
the smell of paint, the stickiness of it
on her fingers.  But she wants them
to know it, too.  And they love the feel of it
the paint on their fingers
the room hanging with drawings
paint on the floor and the easiness of it
the joy of learning it only yesterday... 

There is also something rather magical about my job--working with ten and eleven year olds--as I currently do--when they write poetry.  I often tell my students that I know when a poem is really, really good when it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up--and when reading my students' poetry, that often happens to me.  

I love the craft of writing poetry.  I love agonizing over finding precisely the right word to complete my thought.  I love finding words in interesting juxtapositions that somehow make sense out of the senseless.  

I have a vivid memory of the very first book I recall being read to me.  It was Beatrix Potter...The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  I remember the sound of the words as my mother read them to me---gooseberries, black currant bushes, and Peter’s “scritch scratching.”   The unfamiliar words were rich and magical--and made me want to say them over and over in my head.  It was then, I’m nearly certain, that I became a poet.  Whatever imprinting takes place when we hear such evocative words in our young lives---I’m sure it was then that it happened to me...

I sometimes miss the uneasiness of writing poetry----of agonizing over that perfect word.

“...reminding me what it was like
to turn restlessly shaping a phrase
finding a quiet word
chasing images into the blackness
of my slumber...”

So, I arrive at this place---ready to create anew and longing to tie all of those absent pieces together again---the scientist, artist, poet.  And this is the place it will begin...