As I prepare to release Dark Road, my first collection of poems I have been reminiscing about how poetry came into my life.

The library was a refuge for the misfit, cross eyed, single parent kid attending Catholic school. Books were my friends and offered opportunities for great adventures and fun.  They didn’t tease or judge me and offered escape and solace from a misunderstood world. There was a worn and weighty sky blue hued bound book filled with poems.  I  would get lost in its pages for hours curiously comforted by the rhythms and moods that were found within.

I saw my first Shakespearean play when I was nine and fell in love with the musicality of the words and the theatre. Dear Uncle Llew with his lilting Welsh accent recited snippets of Keats, Shelly, & Dickinson to me and whoever was within earshot.  My mother had an amazing record collection and I listened to opera, Frank Sinatra, Kris Kristofferson,  and a.m. pop radio.  Words falling onto my ears and into my heart.

On the shelf is a collection of love poems from a sweet ex lover that I have held onto for over two decades despite letting him go. Cohen, Plath, Walden,  Jim Carroll,  Will and his sonnets,  Susan McMaster,  Rumi,  Dr. Seuss and Jewel are fragments of  my poetic journey.

Poems are bite sized morsels in a too busy world. They allow us to pause, to feel, to wonder. They are mysteries to unravel, breaths of  crisp air,  sweet promises, youth’s outrage and  two a.m. heartbreak. They are our moments captured.

Peace

Laura