Slow Blooming Gratitudes

A finalist in Finishing Line Press's 2017 NEW WOMEN'S VOICES CHAPBOOK COMPETITION, Slow Blooming Gratitudes is Vermont poet Sarah W. Bartlett's second chapbook. Her poems invite readers into moments of transformation, healing and presence. "These are no ordinary poems of love, loss, letting go, courage, and universality," writes Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, publisher and editor of the Aurorean poetry journal. "Rather … they are extraordinary poems ... masterfully crafted … extending the hand of welcome to each reader." Ellaraine Lockie, award-winning poet, nonfiction author, contest judge, and educator says the language of this collection "seeps into the reader like a slow, soft massage" in its capacity "to offer solace and acceptance in times of adversity." Sarah's poetry and prose appear in Adanna, the Aurorean, Minerva Rising, PoemMemoirStory, Mom Egg Review, Ars Medica; and highly-acclaimed anthologies, including the award-winning Women on Poetry (McFarland & Co. Inc., 2012). Her first poetry chapbook was Into the Great Blue: Meditations of Summer (Finishing Line Press, 2011). In 2010, she founded writing inside VT, a weekly writing group inside Vermont's sole women's prison to encourage personal and social change within a supportive community. Now in its eighth year, the program hosts an active blog (www.writinginsideVT.com) and continues to hold readings and book talks based on the 2013 publication of HEAR ME, SEE ME: INCARCERATED WOMEN WRITE (Orbis Books). Sarah co-edited this anthology of writing and art by 60 early program participants, and has published a number of pieces as well as delivered two keynote speeches about the work. Sarah was greatly influenced by her father, a world-class chemist devoted to making the world a better place. From him she learned the value of community and a love of words at play. Sarah spent the first 25 years of her professional life using language in service to planning, marketing and public relations for non profit organizations. Sarah's current work as change agent and poet draws on the full range of her experience and prior training, including a doctorate in health education from Harvard and certification as a mediator. Language remains the medium for her life work creating communities that support individual transformation and healing through writing, as well as her own creative writing. Like the hummingbird who has taught her to see deep into the heart of things, she seeks to awaken the soul to presence. Her reflections on both external and interior worlds draw from her life and homes in the Vermont mountains and Massachusetts shore, where she lives with her husband and pets.