FOMITE

‍Sharon Webster’s second collection of poems and art, O Song, sings the richness of everyday life: its outrageous surprises, abundant sensuality, unavoidable losses, and nuanced emotions. A “pickin’ party” in Kentucky, a saxophone’s wail, the loss of a beloved brother, complex love of birthplace – all this and more is explored in poems rich with lyric invention and suggestion. Evocative color images of Webster’s multi-media visual art add a soulful, non-verbal dimension to the depth, beauty and music of Webster’s yearnings and vivid perspectives.

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‍Praise

‍O Song is an outpouring of sound in visceral threads where colors cluster below the surface and shine. In this land where the soft white ghost of our cat/comes back to watch at the window, Sharon Webster dissolves the boundaries between art and music, making room for the words in our laps like warm nets. She sees metaphors for cohesion in well-oiled rituals, cloth and the ten true moons of her fingertips. She brings us through the intimate grief of losing a bluegrass-infused brother, past ancestors in the mirror, to alight on branches heavy with crows. Webster’s lyricism is a treasured friend from whom You can part company and not be gone.

‍—Cindy Ellen Hill, author of Love in a Time of Climate Change, Wild Earth, and Elegy for the Trees

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‍“O, what a wonderful book! — sometimes quirky and exuberant; sometimes tender, elegiac; sometimes dark, raw. But always Sharon Webster notices things: the family house exactly somewhere between a tobacco field and suburbia. And the crows! A tree cries/ through the night/ swollen with crows.”

‍—Sue D. Burton, author of poetry collections, Box and Little Steel

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‍About the Author

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‍Sharon Webster is a poet, visual artist, and teacher of adults with cognitive challenges. Her work addresses the personal, celebrates the sensual, and believes in the mysteries of process. 

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‍Born in a colorful river town in Carrollton, Kentucky, Sharon has lived in Burlington, Vermont with her husband, the poet David Cavanagh, since 1982. 

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‍Webster is a frequent exhibitor of mixed media artwork in Vermont and elsewhere. She gives poetry readings whenever she is asked. Sharon is a big fan of the connection and chemistry of in-person poetry and art events for the shared experience they provide.

‍Sharon worked for more than thirty-five years with developmentally challenged people, helping them to lead rich, normal lives, teaching them art as well (though she often felt they were teaching her). She does this work now on a volunteer basis. Sharon taught Studio Art and research and fundamental writing for Burlington College and Community College of Vermont in Winooski, Vermont. 

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‍Her first book of poems and art, Everyone Lives Here, was published in 2014 by Fomite Press in Burlington, VT. A third book has been promised by Salmon Poetry in Ireland.