On my journey to become a poet, I have learned to write from that threshold of what I know and don’t know. To let questions be my guide, questions, such as how does that ant not lose the honeysuckle she carries against the wind? And follow the question wherever it leads.
To my early childhood in St. Louis, where my first poem was about God, the biggest mystery to me as a first grader in a Catholic school. And from there, my mom’s fears and desires, stronger than any wind, swept us to live in a rural town with a man she met in rehab who resembled George Harrison on his Dark Horse album. Perhaps Mom thought she needed a man to survive like an ant needs a honeysuckle blossom during a storm. Storms in the form of domestic violence altered my youth but there was also an escape to an all-girls boarding school.
In that hive of Benedictine nuns and girls from all over the world, I found freedom in that nurturing structure and learned to cherish other females, not compete with them. This is where the seed of feminism was planted in me before I even knew the word feminism.
I graduated from Stephens College with a BFA in creative writing and moved to Ireland to earn an MFA in Women’s Studies from the National University of Ireland Galway. While living in Cork City for nearly ten years, I fully stepped into the world of poetry and took my place in it as a poet. I remember the exact workshop led by dub poet Lillian Allen in 2012 where she listened to me read and then exclaimed that there was honey in my voice. “Call yourself a poet”, she stated as simply and earnestly as an invocation. I did. I do. And I often repeat her advice to other poets unsure of their hearts’ calling.
Calling myself a poet has meant that I take action to bring poetry into my life every day and into the lives of others. I’ve read at numerous literary events and helped organize platforms for other writes to share their work on open mics and at festivals, often fusing poetry with other artforms such as dance, film, and music, with well-funded institutions like the Munster Literature Centre as well as grassroots organizations well-heeled with passionate, creative individuals.
I understand through experience how self-expression is a powerful tool for healing and personal agency. To continue nourishing my writing and supporting others, I joined a writers group in Beaufort, South Carolina, where I moved in 2015 to be close to my mom and sister. While working as the Child Advocate in a domestic violence shelter, I developed various creative activities for the children and women. One of the most rewarding sessions with adult clients was fusing my passion for poetry and advocacy by leading a poetry workshop with survivors of domestic abuse.
My commitment to my vocation as a poet has led me to an abundance of possibilities and achievements. My poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies in the US, Ireland, and the UK, such as in Inverted Syntax, Crannog Magazine, and The High Window, among others. I have been a featured reader at numerous literary festivals and events, including the 2018 Cork International Poetry Festival, the 2019 Deckle Edge Book Festival, and the 2020 Pat Conroy Literary Festival.
In 2019, my poem “Sow Calling” was a finalist in the Sublingua Poetry Prize; and, most recently, my poem “Wasp Medicine” was a finalist for the 2023 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Prize. Furthermore, I was a semifinalist for the Scotti Merrill Award in 2023, and my chapbook manuscript, RocknRollCinderellaJezebel, was a semi-finalist in The Baltic Chapbook Competition 2023 .
In May 2023, I graduated from Hollins University with an MFA in creative writing with a full-length poetry manuscript, Wasp Medicine. At Hollins, I critiqued graduate and undergraduate-level writers across all genres, analyzed and discussed domestic and international literature, and worked as a Graduate Assistant reviewing literary contest submissions and coordinating community literary events.
My poetry manuscript, Wasp Medicine, received the following praise from my thesis advisor Thorpe Moeckel, Director of the Jackson Center for Creative Writing: “readers are provided with experiences of ‘blessings and turbulence, often one inside the other,’ in which a woman’s journey unfolds into, simultaneously, the past and present of her personal history from childhood to young adulthood, history focused on family and touches on lovers and others involved in her coming of age. Memory bears witness even as it is transformed, along with the self, as the self works toward healing, forgiveness and compassion.”

Crafting each poem and lyric essay I write is spiritual work. I remind myself to remain in a space of open awareness and uncertainty to allow acceptance to unfold. I have learned to welcome the challenge and appreciate the joy of writing as my sanctuary. To feel openness and presence when I write, I set aside my long-held dreams and lean into a simple practice—write each day, participate in regular workshops, submit to four literary journals and competitions a month, nurture friendships with other writers, carry a notebook, sit among trees, and always, always let my questions be my guide.

As a woman who has straddled privilege and scarcity (attending boarding school and growing up on food stamps) as well as experienced countless opportunities (living abroad in Ireland) and faced barriers (based on class and gender), I recognize the importance of valuing and creating space for all experiences, particularly those of vulnerable and marginalized people for what these experiences teach us about ourselves, the world, and those we other. I believe we need to find new ways to bring the transformative power of literature to more people, especially those marginalized in society.
What I admire about this project is that it brings poetry and art to people where they are–on the bus. This project interrupts a seemingly ordinary and mundane act (waiting for and riding a city bus) and elevates it to a source of wonder, mystery, something worthy of art-making.
This project and more importantly those who take the bus require that the art made for and of this act is not just a form of escape, it is a mirror. The poetry or writing is partly born out of the bus experience, born on the streets literally and figuratively.
This writing is a mirror that will make people feel seen. I hope to learn about myself, about people in Roanoke who ride the bus and learn some beautiful and challenging aspects of Roanoke which I have not been privy to in the solitary confines of my Prius.

Roanoke blends and juxtaposes seemingly disparate qualities which inspires me as a writer who explores relationships and makes connections that dispel the illusion of separation among people, space, time, things. To me, Roanoke has an abundance of beauty and whatever the opposite of beauty is…litter, decay, trash on the railroad tracks. There are the stoic and capricious mountains that stand against time while marking it. A downtown with ample parking and brazen white skunks. I find Roanoke is a place I don’t have to compromise on many things I love and it also challenges me to find joy and hope and gratitude as well. Orchards have recently become shopping centers. Homeless people sleep under overpasses for a few weeks and are then shooed away by cops. Foxes with mange are highlighted on social media and then forgotten in a day or two, once fear and pity have found another carcass. I don’t mean to sound cynical. I met a few people who cared as much about the fox as I did to try to trap and treat it. Roanoke is a bit like that fox. A mix of startling beauty, wild potential, and some mange which enough people are working to heal.