BIO

Donna Denize is a talented, award-winning teacher at St. Albans School; she is also a published, accomplished poet. The poems of Ms. Denize have appeared in both anthologies and magazines, including the book Hungry As We Are . Also, Ms. Denize published a selection of poems, The Lover's Voice in 1997 (Hickory House Press).

Ms. Denize holds degrees from Stonehill College and Howard University and received grants from the Bread Loaf School of English, Lincoln College at Oxford Univeristy, Johns Hopkins Summer Writing Program, the D.C. Humanities Council, and The Folger Shakespeare Library. She was a contributor to Shakespeare Set Free and Use of Color in Selected Shakespearean Works.

Originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Ms. Denize has been a resident of the Washington area since 1978. She began teaching at St. Albans in 1987; prior to that she taught English at the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia.

Biographical information from The Lover's Voice, by Donna Denize, Hickory Hill Press, 1997.

Ms. Denize wrote a poem for me and my wife that she read at our wedding in 1996. It was great. To truly experience a Denize poem, you have to see her perform it. She was so successful reading that poem that word travelled to Ms. Denize's friend, the actress Angela Bassett, who then asked her to write and read a poem for her wedding. Ms. Denize did, and I heard the poem was a smashing success (according to Peoplemagazine, among other sources). To read the poem Ms. Denize wrote for our wedding, "Epithalamion, The New Language," you're going to have to buy her book, The Lover's Voice.

The poem I'm going to toss out to you here is a Denize classic. When she reads the poem, she introduces it by saying, "This is a poem about losing a poem. I was on dorm duty once at Foxcroft and I was writing this poem, and a girl knocked on my door at 2 a.m. I told her to go away, but she kept saying, 'Ms. Denize! Ms. Denize!' and so I had to open up. When I got done with her I sat back down again and I had lost the poem. I couldn't get it back." Anyone who has ever forgotten a song, a name, a thought, or a brilliant idea can probably relate to this poem:

"Inspired"

Damn!
It's leavin' again
like some

door to door salesman;
Some poem, some life
comes dancin' through my head

like a jazzzz song,

and as soon as I start hummin'
hummin' along, the thing leaves

and it don't even say good bye. Gone!
an' me? I'm left

runnin' fast as I can down these
sidestreets,
corners waitin' for it to hit a stop

light, and come on real strong before it leaves me with that hungry look,

and its scent in the air.

from The Lover's Voice