I was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1948. I attended St. Philip Catholic High School for middle school and high school. I first wanted to be a writer when I was thirteen. I was given a paying job with the local newspaper, The Enquirer & News, to write columns geared toward teenagers for The Youth Page which was printed in each Saturday edition. My best friend, Phyllis, also wrote for the paper, but she also wrote wonderful poems, poems that spread nature and love and God all over each page. Poems I wanted to write. But my poems were never like hers.The difficulty I had writing back then was that the poets rhymed their poems and wrote about nature as a philosophical discussion. No one wrote about personal feelings, or used the word "I". I was told never to write about myself because no one would be able to relate to those poems. They were too personal and did not appeal to the majority of people who would read them. The nuns at school also believed that Robert Frost was the only poet whose work should be taught and praised. I didn't. In my senior year, with an English teacher who was not a nun, I found Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his A Coney Island of the Mind. I read his book over and over, his ability to form ideas and feelings from all our minds and make them bold and loud and heard.That's where my poems were born.When I entered the convent the summer after graduation, my poems went with me. I had already written a song for "church singing" entitled "Hand in Hand", which I found out later had traveled to most Catholic churches in Michigan. While I was in the convent, I wrote two more songs with another Sister. When I was asked to leave the Novitiate, I was told my poems and I did not have any spirituality. Luckily, I never believed that.Publishing was a problem back in the 50s and 60s. There wasn't any internet, or Amazon or IngramSpark, and writers were not considered "writers" unless their work was in a hardback book sold from well-known publishers. And in order to send your book, you had to have an agent send it for you. And you had to be "known" before an agent would take you on. Unless you knew someone who knew someone, which I didn't, publishing was almost impossible. Sending poems to magazines, by mail, waiting for weeks, was the same.I was 32 years old when I applied to Bowling Green State University, Ohio, to finish my Bachelor's degree in creative writing. My interview was painful. I wasn't 18, I didn't have any published poems, and the poems I had were not that good. But I was accepted. And there, in one small poem, I wrote words that fashioned the horrors of my mother's death. It was then that I called myself a poet.Somewhere between the time I was 30 and 64, I taught English in a public school, raised my daughter, and self-published a book for her. Through Every Season Bright and New was one long poem with awesome illustrations. Unfortunately, with the death of my illustrator, I cannot re-print it. But it was My book! Years went by. Marriage, divorce, job changes. I somehow lost who I was. I wasn't writing, and I was very much abandoned.I wanted to write. I wanted to call myself a poet again, but there was no time to go back to college. No time to write. Just time for procrastination, until it came to me. "Take a class online." It was A New Year's resolution --"I will take the first on-line writing class that appears on my computer screen!" Attending Gotham Writers Workshop was one of the best decisions I have made.There, I found my voice! My real voice. My words! My second book, I Will Write Loudly So You Can Hear Me, is just that! A LOUD book. In some ways, it is a terrifying book because the words ARE my words. There's no more messing around or treading softly either in my words or my life! And Amazon was right there with me! No waddling through agents or hidden agendas. And at 69, I finally knew I was the poet I wanted to be. IndieReader applauded my efforts with a 4.8 out of 5.The second-best decision I have made for my life was to self-publish , once again. At 75, I now have self-published my third book, Compline, with Amazon, and IndieReader has given me a 5. While my second book spoke of the horror I lived through as a child, something no one was allowed to mention out loud and no one ever reported family abuse, Compline brings a quieter place to the reader, a soul of nature and self, which has always not been spoken aloud.I am very proud of my accomplishments. I didn't publish for fame or fortune, but to offer a safe place for those who have had to deal with abuse and think they are alone, and to those who search outside the church walls for God and think they are not worthy enough, or in my case, told they have no spirituality. My greatest piece of advice that I can share with up-and-coming-want-to-be-writers is to follow your dream and your own needs for writing a book. This is your journey and no one else's. Listen to your own voice.Read more about this authorRead less about this author