I’m a Wyoming-Montana poet and writer who has worked in Arts-in-Schools and Communities programs throughout the West and Midwest for more than four decades. I’m currently listed on state Arts Council Rosters in MT, ND, SD, and NE. My Teaching Artist residencies have often been thousands of miles from home, in small town schools and libraries, on a number of Native American reservations, in hospitals and senior centers, and in homeless and refugee shelters. I’ve loved and learned from every one of them.

***!!!PLEASE NOTE: The travel distance option is far too short for writers in the Western states especially. TA’s here routinely drive hundreds, if not thousands of miles to reach many residencies, as some of us are on Arts Rosters in multiple states. I’ll drive anywhere!

As offspring of an Irish immigrant father and a Brooklyn mom, who moved to Wyoming before I was born, I had a childhood that swung on a pendulum between Cheyenne Frontier Days and subways, 30 below high plains winters and hot humid NYC summers. I had the best of both worlds.

My college and graduate studies took place in Wyoming, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Montana. Since then I have lived most of my adult life in rural settings: on a Wyoming sheep and cattle ranch, decades without running water or electricity, nights lit only by moon and stars; in an 8′ x 16′ cabin in the Bitterroot Mountains south of Missoula, where once I came home from work to find a bear cub eating Crisco on the picnic table; and now in the beer barley country of north Central Montana.

Hard country, all of it, full of people and places whose voices deserve to be lifted up and heard.

Poetry is my heart. The voice of my father singing, of my mother reading, of teachers training my memory for the glorious music of words, for ways to say the unsayable. I was so lucky that my desire to share all of that and the joy of being with kids coincided with the rise of poetry-in-the-schools in the 70’s:  I found a way to get paid to do important work I loved. I sincerely hope to keep on keepin’ on until I drop in the traces. (and a reminder — I’ll drive anywhere!)