Theresa-Ann Walther will be the featured poet at the Performing Arts Studio Second Sunday Poetry Reading.  The free reading on September 9, begins at 2:00 in the Norman Depot, 200 South Jones Avenue. 

Walther grew up in the “idyllic little town of Kilbride, Newfoundland, Canada” a place she still calls home, even though she moved to Oklahoma City when she was seventeen.  As a young girl she was inspired by a fourth grade English teacher to write her first story and was “hooked” on words and images from that point on.  A “love for writing and literature guaranteed that I would grow up to be an English teacher” she says.  She is a Professor of English at Rose State College.  It is a vocation she loves.  Her motto in life, she says, is “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

2007 Oklahoma Book Award winner Carl Sennhenn, host of the PAS poetry series, says of Walther,  “I am confident that Theresa-Ann, who prefers to be called Trixie, will give a very interesting reading: her poems are powerful, open, and honest and are capable of taking one's breath away at times.”

The public is invited to enjoy both the poetry reading and the pottery of Daniel Harris on display in the PAS Gallery.  Light refreshments will be served.

For information on Performing Arts Studio programs, call 405-307-9320.  PAS office and gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 PM.

ORDINARY MOTHER

There was a time when we curled
together, long legs weighted on mine
when I fit inside the curve below her breasts
as thumbed and fingered pages turned
stories at bedtime into ritual, sundown
every night before the drinking got too heavy.

Me left begging for just one more
before she snuffed the room with finger
flicked automatically to answer the other plea.

In the kitchen, highball glass and poison
juice arranged for solitary waiting,
maternal things done before the craving fed,
until there came a time when ordinary habits
were swallowed with the booze
and I curled alone in the memory of her in my bed.

Theresa-Ann Walther