Olson Helps Craft Poets Guild Anthology

Packed with poems celebrating Guilford and the shoreline, the Guilford Poets Guild Tenth Anniversary Anthology makes a wonderful
"last-minute gift," hints Sharon Olson.

"I think you can pick up this book and open it to any page and you would suddenly be in this place of what we call the shoreline," says the accomplished poet. "You'd hear the birds, you would soak in the landscape, and you would also hear the voices of the people. You'd hear about their experiences, their history, the houses they've lived in; their hopes, their daily walks."

Where else could you enjoy poems including "The Zen of Blueberry Picking at Bishop's" (by Jane Muir), "Jacobs Beach, July Fourth," (Gemma
Mathewson), or "Guilford Song" and "Regicide Cellar" (both by Sharon), to name just a few?

The book, $15, is available at Breakwater Books. Proceeds support non-profit Guilford Poets Guild, which operates through a grant from the Katrina Van Tassel Poetry Fund, a Guilford Foundation Legacy Fund.

Sharon credits many guild members for their work on the anthology, which was guest-edited by Gray Jacobik, professor emeritus (Eastern Connecticut State University). The book is dedicated to Van Tassel and Richard Tietjen, a guild member who passed away in 2009.

Richard encouraged Sharon to help produce the anthology for the guild, she says.

"Somehow he made it really clear what kind of things would help guide the guild," she says. "He's still a guiding spirit."

Sharon got to know Richard shortly after she and her husband William Sumner moved here from Palo Alto, California, in 2008. The couple married in Italy in 2006 before moving here from California. They chose Guilford in part because William has ancestors buried in Guilford's Alderbrook and Foote/Ward cemeteries and Sharon, a genealogist, can trace her own roots back to Branford's Harrison family.

The mechanism and idea for the anthology was in place when Sharon arrived here, but guild members will tell you Sharon's enthusiasm helped the work along.

"Richard had set up the email [for entries] and I got to handle them. Midway through the process last summer, I got really excited and made up dummies," says Sharon, who also filled her dining table with every poem, laid out in page order.

Guild members visiting her home saw Sharon's interest and asked her to keep working, along with book designer Kerry Carroll. In 2005, as a member of the venerable Waverly Writers of Palo Alto, Sharon helped compile that groups' 25th anniversary anthology.

Sharon's own book of 53 poems (The Long Night of Flying, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2006) was published after she was asked to join the prestigious Sixteen Rivers poetry collective in 2004. Prior to that, Sharon's poems had been published in literary journals including the American Literary Review. Her "chapbook," (short poetry collection) Clouds Brushed in Later, won the first Abby Niebauer Memorial Chapbook competition (Palo Alto) in the 1980s.

Sharon says she never expected to find a poets' guild in her new hometown.

"I was so excited when I found this group on the Internet. I entered 'Guilford' and 'poetry' and got some hits, including this interesting guild that didn't have a website-just a phone number, which I called."

Sharon was invited to join and has since helped remedy the guild's online profile, creating an Internet home for the group.

"I know making a website is costly and needs a webmaster. But there are some major blogs and because a blog is ever-changing, I knew it could work. Now I just make sure I have information entered for the next event," she says of the site, http://guilfordpoetsguild.wordpress.com.

Sharon will be on the guild's event calendar as a featured reader in November 2010.

The retired reference librarian and cataloger says she likely wouldn't have explored her poetry talent if it hadn't been for a friend in Palo Alto. The friend encouraged her to go to a forms class shortly after Sharon began her 29-year career with as a reference librarian and cataloger with the Palo Alto Library.

The class was led by Frances Mayes (author of Under the Tuscan Sun). Mayes picked the first poem Sharon submitted to be read to the class.

"It was really encouraging and somehow I was hooked," says Sharon.

Mayes later reviewed Sharon's poems in The Long Night of Flying, stating, "passionate, finely nuanced, and precise, these poems' surprising turns take you somewhere new."