I am a writer and an artist, an avid science fiction and fantasy fan, and a beginning gardener.  I am also a Veteran with over 25 years in the reserve and active military, and an attorney with 18 years' work in administrative law.  Despite these often disparate career paths, I have continued to write creatively, mostly poetry.  In 2016, I published my first book of poems, a collection of work from 1990-2011.  Its title is a clutch of eggs, and I worked on it while Gizmo, our first parrot, was brooding her first clutch of eggs.  In 2019, I published a chapbook of short stories and poems, titled When I am Old, I Shall Wear Pink.  

A poet's job is to observe moments of life closely, to examine them with intention. The incongruent materials of which life is woven, their intersections and layerings with, within, and without all our lives together, plant and animal life, the air and sea and earth give us tapestries beautiful in their terror and terrible in their beauty.  They give us observations, perspectives, and beg us to ask of them our questions, test our answers, and to converse with each other as well as with them.  As life events accrue – fodder, as they say, for our stories – I wonder what our new meanings are, what form our stories will take, and what our new mythologies will be.  

I hope you will join me in these conversations, make observations, ask questions, share perspectives.

Let us become wise together and if not achieving wisdom just yet, become scholars and friends on our way.

In warmth, peace, calm, and love,

Lila J. Bakke