Writing from a Young Girl's Life.
A poetry collection tracing memory, becoming, and voice.
These poems follow a girl growing into a woman and a writer. Some were started in notebooks decades ago; others were finished this year. Together they trace how a voice forms — slowly, honestly, and sometimes against the odds.
The collection is being assembled now. The list below is the first to hear when it is ready.
The three movements
Memory
Poems about the rooms, voices and small moments that shaped a childhood — the kitchen table, the church pew, the street after dark.
Becoming
The in-between years — learning who you are while everyone tells you who to be, and keeping a private record of the difference.
Voice
Finding the words, and the nerve, to say what was always there. These are the newest poems in the book, and the ones the others were pointing toward.
Notes on the poems
Decades in the making
Some poems were drafted in school notebooks; others were finished this year. The collection spans a whole writing life.
Plain language, carefully kept
No ornament for its own sake — the poems aim to say true things in words a young girl could have written and a grown woman chose to keep.
Companion to the music
Many of these poems share roots with the songs in the MooneChild catalog — the same memories, heard two ways.