Harriet Gleeson was born, an only child, in Queensland, Australia. She grew up with humid weather, mango trees and her Irish Granny next door. She attended twelve years of Catholic school in the days when the protestant kids chanted 'Catholic dogs jump like frogs into the holy water'. She was a pious child, attempting, but I believe never completing, the nine First Fridays (a missed chance to amass celestial brownie points for shorter time in Purgatory.) She lived as a religious sister for thirty years, graduated from the University of New South Wales in science and math and taught in the order's schools. Notwithstanding the math/science, she has loved literature, especially poetry, all her life. She moved to the US in 1993 and retired with her partner to California's north coast in 2001 where she discovered a community rich in the practice of the arts, including a lively writing community. The popular community writing classes and their gifted teachers nurtured her unexplored itch to write. She scratched it grandly and with some trepidation by beginning to write poetry.
Harriet Gleeson's collection come down the stairs artfully draws us into rich pockets of imagination and refuge, of departure and rejoicing, of flight and grounding. We're offered sideways glimpses into life-altering moments, where time slows and we enter the hyper reality of this moment of both chaos and connection. The poems span childhood to older age, and in every one, it is a delight to see the world "always a turning."Charlotte Gullick author of By Way of Water Impressively crafted, emotionally moving, mind engaged and soul reaching Harriet Gleeson's come down the stairs is a beautiful collection of poems. Her magnificent craft never eclipses her content. "DESIRE" starts out deceptively simple and then plunges into the dark: "points of light litter the night sky /enter the heart like barbs." The "desire to know the earth" suspends us "between desires." These poems touch on other desires, enter the heart like the arrows of Eros.Sharon Dubiago author of Hard Country
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