I Wish I'd Written This

Our "I Wish I'd Written This" series returns next Friday with new host and poet Rosemary Nissen-Wade.  She will start by tickling our minds with a slew of Australian contemporary poets whose work is not as familiar as others found around the world.  Once we get our fill of these poets we will once again move back into a veritable array of poets from across the globe but in the meantime please enjoy the upcoming selections as they promise to be new to most of us and please give Rosemary a warm welcome as a new contributor and staff member for Poets United.

Below you will find just a little about Rosemary aka The Passionate Crone.  We here at Poets United look forward to reading her contributions.

Aussie poet Rosemary Nissen-Wade grew up in Launceston on the island of Tasmania. As an adult she lived many years in the city of Melbourne, where she attended university, worked in libraries, married and raised her children, and became active in the poetry scene during the eighties and nineties.

Her work was widely published and broadcast. She became known as a dynamic performance poet (including a stint in a poetry theatre group), an innovative teacher of creative writing at both tertiary and community levels (including a series of prison workshops), and an independent publisher of Australian poetry. Three collections of her own poetry have appeared since 1985. Only one, Secret Leopard (Alyscamps Press, 2005) is still in print.

In 1994 she and her third husband, writer Andrew Wade, moved to the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, to a small country town near mountains and rainforest, and not too far from the ocean. It reminds her of the Tasmania she grew up in, but the climate is thankfully much warmer.

She has now embraced the internet. Her poetry has appeared in online journals and anthologies, and there is a selection at her website. New poems are aired at her poetry blogs, The Passionate Crone and Stones for the River. She also co-administers haiku, tanka and free verse groups on facebook.

Since 1992 she has also worked as a Reiki Master and a professional psychic medium.