Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio Presents Marianne Tefft

-- I'm a journalism grad who had a "first life" in magazine journalism, and freelance marketing-communications work in Canada; however, with the arrival of my daughter Julia, now 26, I made a mid-life career change into Montessori teaching. Since 2002, I've been a classroom teacher at Sint Maarten Montessori School in the Dutch Caribbean.

-- I absolutely LOVE encouraging kids and, really, EVERYone to find their Inner Poet!  One of the great satisfactions of a life in words is the knowledge that 17 of my current and former students, ages 9 to 19, have also become published writers and poets -- and we're just getting started 😄

-- On your show, I'll read from my collections Full Moon Fire, published last summer, and Moonchild, coming in December. (Yes, I'm a July-born Moonchild, and the Moon does shine brightly into my work!) I'm a writer who always has multiple projects in the works. These days, I'm working on a manuscript entitled RAINBOW COUNTRY, inspired through and through by life in my island home. I'd like to share a poem or two from that work in progress.

-- To launch Full Moon Fire, I collaborated with Rawle James in Toronto and the international poets of the Inspired Poetry Corner in the first Moon Lovers International Poetry & Music Fest -- featuring SXM poets live on stage and poet-friends on Zoom!! Beginning in November 2022, we plan to make this a monthly event!