Poetry Story

It all started…

in high school. Tori rode a bright orange 10-speed Schwinn to school and parked it every day under the flagpole. A boy who (apparently) liked her started to leave her poems on the book rack of her bike. She appreciated his turn of phrase and wrote him poems back. They kept this up all semester until he finally asked her to the movies.

In college, she continued writing poems and worked on the student literary magazine. Her parents were really hoping for an anesthesiologist. Instead, she majored in English. It was in an Introduction to Literary Study that she first read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two influential poets of the modern century, who also happened to be women, writing from a very feminist perspective. Their writing changed her relationship to poetry. In fact, blew off the mud flaps.

She earned an MFA in creative writing in London with Antioch University International, studying with published authors, poets and fringe theatre playwrights and mingling with other would-be authors, poets and fringe theatre playwrights.

She discovered Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) in the early 2010s after years immersed in kids and career. From the beginning, she was gobsmacked by the amazing talent and friendliness of the membership, which inspired her to write more, write better and write in community. She made new connections that have changed and enriched her life. She was also grateful to win WFOP’s emerging poet and chapbook prizes, and she’s grateful to the fellowship for reconnecting her with poetry and writing again—that fierce creativity Plath and Sexton made their own.