Welcome to the March 2019 edition of Blue Heron Speaks! Our featured author this month is Lois Roma-Deeley, author of The Short List of Certainties, as well as Rules of Hunger, northSight and High Notes.

In Lois Roma-Deeley’s poems, she connects us to “something unnamed and unknowable from another world,” through vivid imagery, exquisite language, and details that only someone innately intuitive could translate onto the page for us. She invites us to step outside of ourselves, in order to dig deep, with questions such as, whether “… it’s at all possible / for anyone to slip into the holy nothingness of now?” We want to know more about the people in her poems. We want to know where they come from and where they are going, because ultimately, we are all searching for answers to the unknowable. These poems are mini, time-traveler sessions. I encourage you to read and re-read them. Each time, you may just journey to new places within the mind.

Please visit the Blue Heron Speaks Featured Author page of our site, to read 3 sample poems, and to learn more about Lois Roma-Deeley’s books.

(photo credit: Erin Deeley)

Lois Roma-Deeley’s most recent full-length book of poetry is The Short List of Certainties, winner of the Jacopone da Todi Book Prize (Franciscan University Press). She is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Rules of Hunger, northSight and High Notes—a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. Roma-Deeley’s poems have been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies, nationally and internationally. She’s the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her poetry including an Arizona Commission on the Arts grant, Lawrence Epstein Visiting Writer Award, New Millennium Writing (finalist), Ragdale Residency Fellowship and many others. She’s taught creative writing at the graduate, undergraduate levels for many years. Roma-Deeley was named U.S. Professor of the Year, Community College, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE, 2012-2013. She is the first national winner of this award that Arizona has ever had in any category. Currently, Roma-Deeley is the Associate Editor of the international poetry journal Presence. www.loisroma-deeley.com