I am just thrilled to have won the goodreads.com poetry contest for December, 2011 with my poem “Thirst.” The piece will be included in the goodreads newsletter and sent out to its 3.5 million readers. This competition attracts incredibly talented writers and I am honoured to be among them.

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/285806-thirst

 

Tricia’s hardcover book “Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered” has just been published and is now available to order online via PayPal.

Click here to order your copy and have it delivered by mail.

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Deliver to your Kindle or other device by clicking here.

 

Listen here to Tricia talk about her book.

Read and post reviews at goodreads.com

 

 

"I know it's poetry if it knocks the top of my head off."
-Emily Dickinson

 

Thank you for visiting.

 

Maybe you intended on coming here, a poetry lover hoping for poems that ring true for you, or you may have just wandered in "off the street." Either way, welcome to my poetry and prose.

 

My hope is that you'll see something of yourself in my words, see part of your life there, or at least shades of it. And just maybe you'll come away with a flicker of understanding that wasn't there before, a slightly different way of looking at what life throws at us. Better yet, you'll find some indefinable comfort in my words.

 

Emily Dickinson sets a high bar, but it's one that all writers should reach for. Away with all bewildering and indecipherable poems! Too often poetry seems like a fortress that says "Keep Out. You're not smart enough to get in here." It's almost as if an unwritten rule exists about poetry that says: "If you understand it too easily, it can't be good." And it leaves you with the feeling that everyone else "gets it" but you.

 

I am here to deconstruct that. The poetry I enjoy most, and the pieces I aspire to write, invite the reader in. At its best it can be a shared language like no other.

 

Stay awhile, roam, browse, and enjoy the wonderful photographs.

 

Click the links to read some verses of my work or choose a title from the menu on your left.

 

And do something for me: Remember Emily's words above and complain out loud to whomever will listen when you come across baffling, unfathomable, impenetrable poetry.

 

The world will be the better for it.

 

Meanwhile, I am happy that you came.

 "It is not what the poet feels when he writes the poem that matters, but what the reader feels when reading it."

Most people, myself among them, hear the word poetry, and their eyes glaze over. Or they feel an overwhelming urge for a quick nap.

"Poetry," they grimace: "No! Please! Couldn't I have eye surgery without anesthetics instead?"

That's because we were force-fed the worst of what poetry is as kids. Remember the droning recitations, dissecting reams of the stuff in school, teasing it apart line by line as we blinked to stay awake, coming no closer to understanding any of it.

When I find myself reading a line of poetry over and over again and wonder what I am missing, I feel cheated somehow. And I think we all should.

Too often poetry seems like a building that says "Keep Out. You're not smart enough to get in here." It's almost as if an unwritten rule exists about poetry that says: "If you understand it too easily, it can't be good." And it leaves you with the feeling that everyone else "gets it" but you.

I am here to deconstruct that. The poetry I love reading, and the pieces I aspire to write, invite the reader in. At its best it can be a shared language like no other.

Emily Dickinson set a high bar. She said: "I know it's poetry if it knocks the top of my head off." I'm with Emily.

Maybe you'll see something of yourself in my words, see part of your life there, or at least shades of it. And just maybe you'll find some comfort there. That is what I hope.