Tia Hatch

I grew up with a mother who was an avid reader and writer of poetry. Our shelves were lined with poetry books –Tennyson, Browning, Wordsworth, Keats, Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Sarah Teasdale, Richard Wilbur, Dylan Thomas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Blake, Stephen Vincent Benet, T.S. Elliot, Thomas Gray, John Masefield, Emerson… need I go on? Suffice it to say, it was quite a mélange. My mother always preferred the disciplined writer with perfect stanzas or sonnet forms. I, on the other hand, preferred free verse and short … a succinct thought carefully crafted, but not confined in too much structure. At the age of five, I began dabbling in words and created little poetry books – nothing worth saving, although to a five year old, they were fabulous works of art! As boyfriends entered my life and academics became important, I let go of creative writing. I still held the desire in the back of my mind, so a poem would slip out of my pen from time to time.

A summer in Paris in the late 1960’s changed my life. While living in a residence with a number of students attending the Alliance Francaise, a handsome lad, Fernando from Peru, inspired us to create a salon. A small group of five spent early evenings in artistic endeavors. We were required to do something; no sitting around sipping vin ordinaire. I couldn’t draw or paint, I couldn’t write or play music, I couldn’t sing … so once again, I grabbed a pen and journal. That summer words flowed and impressed on me that, no matter if I was good or not, I would continue to write. And, that I have done, penning several middle school chapter books on Native Americans and my collection of poems, Life Woven in Words.

I hope you may discover some of your own emotions or thoughts captured in my poems or prose. Or, perhaps, a poem or two may inspire you to take out a pen (or computer keyboard) and explore your own wisdom in words.