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Lorraine Ferra

Lorraine Ferra

Between Darkess & Trust


Between Darkness & Trust is a finalist for the 2019 Washington State Book Awards


Lorraine Ferra was born and raised in Vallejo, California, a seaport on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. She was a nun for seven years in a community in Fremont, California, where she majored in theology and education and taught in elementary and secondary schools.

After leaving the convent, she lived for several years in Salt Lake City, pursuing seminars in modern and contemporary poetry and creative writing under the directorship of Robert Mezey at the University of Utah.

Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies since 1976, and some are collected in Eating Bread (Kuhn Spit Press, 1994) and What The Silence Might Say (One-Crow-Dancing Books, 2012).

Her creative writing book, A Crow Doesn’t Need A Shadow: A Guide To Writing Poetry From Nature (Peregrine Smith Books, 1994) has been endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Ferra is a recipient of a Utah Arts Council Award in Poetry and a Westigan Poetry Award selected by John Haines.

She has worked extensively for many years as a poet-in-residence with various state arts programs across the country and, since 2002, through the Skagit River Poetry Foundation in La Conner, WA.

Lorraine and her spouse, Deborah Trent, have lived for twenty-three years in Port Townsend, WA.


Upcoming Reading Dates

Lorraine will be at the MoonPath Press group reading at Open Books, Seattle, WA. Saturday, November 3rd from 7:00pm - 8:30pm.


Between Darkess & Trust: $15.00

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Poem from Between Darkess & Trust

January

It is always the snow,
the unplowed road to the house,

the mailbox nailed to the porch
white and empty.

Down the hill the neighbor
is spinning his tires on ice,

rushing to enter the traffic
this weather has brought to a halt.

I have come to trust
the incredible: all of this falling

toward earth, meltwater
running the eaves in spring,

the iridescence of dusk, ice, starling.
Tomorrow I’m fifty-one.

It has taken this long
to begin learning the language of snow.

To land like an unwritten page.
To say nothing.