We need poetry now, more than ever.

My exploration of Alabama-born Helen Keller has taught me the power of developing an intimate relationship with a figure from history. I read biographies and other accounts of her life, but her own writing -- her journal of the six months immediately following Anne Sullivan Macy's death and the letters she sent back to the USA after visiting the devastation in Japan following the atomic bombs -- led me to know her heart and to imagine the woman she was. I hope these poems give a sketch of who Helen Keller became, and open a window into the heart she gave to the world. Love, compassion for others, and the search for justice motivated her above all else.

Poet and essayist Jeanie Thompson is the author of The Myth of Water: Poems from the Life of Helen Keller, The Seasons Bear Us, White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems, Witness, Litany for a VanishingLandscape, How to Enter the River, and Lotus and Psalm. Her poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies for many years. Her essays on poetry and the writing life have also been published in Old Enough: Southern Women Writers and Artists on Creativity and Aging,Tributaries, Creativity and Compassion, Whatever Remembers Us, High Horse, Working the Dirt, All Out of Faith, The Best of Crazyhorse, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume X: Alabama. While a student in the University of Alabama’s MFA Creative Writing, Jeanie led her classmates in founding the Black Warrior Review literary journal. She served as editor in chief for BWR’S first four issues (1974-76). In 1993 Jeanie founded The Alabama Writers Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The Forum promotes writers and writing and is an ardent supporter of literary arts education. Its award-winning Writing Our Stories program for justice-involved youth takes place on several Alabama Department of Youth Services campuses. Jeanie retired as Executive Director Emerita in 2023. In June 2024, Jeanie received the Albert B. Head Legacy Award for her work as a literary arts advocate and award-winning poet. The Award recognizes public officials, arts patrons, or arts educators who haveempowered arts to thrive in their community, creating lasting importance for future generations in Alabama and beyond. Jeanie was been a poetry faculty member in the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing Program since 2002.

Since 1993, I have directed The Alabama Writers' Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts. The Forum promotes writers and writing and is a strong supporter of literary arts education. Its award-winning Writing Our Stories program for juvenile offenders takes place on three Department of Youth Services campuses.

Since 2002, I have been a member of the poetry faculty of Spalding University’s lo-res MFA Writing Program in Louisville, Kentucky. I teach poetry writing workshops, gives craft lectures, and have served as a guest poetry editor of The Louisville Review.

Spalding’s low residency MFA in Writing program offers serious intellectual stimulation in a noncompetitive, emotionally supportive atmosphere. We are here to help one another become better writers. This ethos permeates everything we do. Please let me know if you would like to learn more about the residencies, both in Louisville and abroad, and the independent study concept of Spalding’s MFA featuring one-on-one mentor-student work, and more.

Latest work:
The Myth of Water - order it here now.