Get to know Betty Spence, award-winning Semmes poet

Published: Tuesday, April 24, 2012, 1:15 PM

 By Press-Register Correspondent 

Betty Spence

MOBILE, Alabama — Betty Spence, 78, encourages everyone, particularly senior citizens, to follow their dreams and to never give up. If the dream is to write, then create poetry or stories or essays. The reward is in doing what the heart desires, she says; the awards, if and when they come, are icing on the cake.

For Spence, who's been writing most of her life, the awards are finally coming.

Though she's made a career in newspaper work and producing devotions for various religious organizations, it is poetry that Spence loves and the genre in which she's recently begun receiving recognition.

A former columnist and correspondent for the Press-Register and a devotional writer for Assembly of God and Church of God publications, Spence got "turned on to poetry" when, at age 39, she attended the University of South Alabama. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.

She's had moderate success with her poetry over the years, but 2011 was her year to shine in that area. She had her works published in several print and online journals. In October, she attended the Alabama State Poetry Association Conference at the University of Montevallo, where she received the following awards for her poetry: first place in the Alabama State Poetry Society Fall contest with her entry "These are Mine"; second place in the Mississippi Poetry Society-sponsored Poet Laureate category with "Needle Delights"; and an honorable mention in the ASPS contest for "The Paper Folder."

Spence continues writing devotionals for adults (regularly published in "God's Word for Today," "Penned from the Heart" and "Life Related Learnings" and for teens ("Take Five Plus").

Get to Know Betty Spence
Birthplace: Mobile
Hometown: Crawford community near Semmes
Family: Son, Chuck
Profession: Wrote for newspaper 12 years and had a column entitled "In the Neighborhood" for eight of those; writes devotionals for adults and teens; and recently won awards for her poetry

She belongs to several writers' organizations, including Alabama Writers' Conclave, the Pensters, Alabama State Poetry Society, Florida Poetry Society and the Huntsville Literary Society.

In the past year, she also co-founded, with Geri Anderson, the Greenleaf Writers' Group, which meets the third Saturday of each month at 10 a.m. at Semmes Public Library, 9150 Moffett Road.

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This story was written by Jo Anne McKnight, Press-Register Correspondent.

Poem published in Birmingham Arts Journal, Vol. 8 Issue 4

         



                                                              ICE SKATER
                                                                      Betty Spence




                                                              Always be like water
                                                              resounding in his ears,
                                                              fluid moves give a river
                                                              as breakable as bone
                                                              back its ebb and flow.


                                                              Silver-booted blades
                                                              scratch winter tracings
                                                              as fabulous as fishes caught
                                                              on alder limbs dropped into
                                                              holes in Walden's Pond

                                                               iced-over with magic panes.

              * Read Birmingham Arts Journal, online at www.birminghamartsjournal.org. 
                         Editor: Jim Reed...Poetry Editor: Irene Latham...Art Editor: Liz Reed...
                         Production Editor: Kathy Jolley 


                                                             

     Also published in Winter, 2011/2012 was the following poem.

                                      School Children View the Body
                                       Of an 11 Year Old Gang Member

                                 
                                                       The picture in the paper
                                                        shows them looking sideways
                                                        into the casket, mothers hovering.
                                                       
                                                        Robert, better known as Yummy,
                                                        (he could live on animal crackers)
                                                        was to start sixth grade in the fall.
    
                                                        To find the hidden picture
                                                         look for a boy putting his tousled head
                                                         in the lion's mouth.                 
                                                                            BS
                                                        
                                                         * Lora Zill is editor of TOS

Time of Singing, Winter 2011/2012

        "Eighty-Something" took second place in Time of Singing               Winter 2011/2012 Contest, "It's a Wonderful Life." 
          
                                         Eighty-Something
                                                             After "coming into Eighty" by May Sarton

                            
                               I think I shall live to be eighty-something--
                     I've seen how loath old poets are to leave.
                     Stick-figures in wind-puffed sleeves
                     staring down an ocean of words unsaid,
                     languishing for want of naming things
                     to others and themselves.

                     I've seen them piping like shore birds
                     on finding half-buried in the sand
                     a bottle thrown into a river at flood stage,
                     a bottle, for all I know, bearing the words:
                     Write the vision, and make it plain.

                     For all the times time has hurried me
                     I think I shall live to worry time along.
                     Already half-past the wakefulness of noon,
                     I'd like to live to sleep-in, sleep-off poems,
                     live until lines in my face story forth,

                     live long enough to give away whatever
                     to whomever I please and be the richer for it.
                     I'll say goodbye but once--and that at the gate.
                     You can, if you like, watch me out of sight.   
                                                                                        --BS

Harp-Strings Poetry Journal

New publication: Harp-Strings Poetry, Winter 2012.  
Editor: Madelyn Eastlund

Home from peddling turnip greens,

Daddy poured it out like small worries

on the kitchen floor.  Mama, who could

all but see germs passed from hand to hand,

wouldn't have it any other way.

That she never took a shine

two what we children were so taken by

had something to do with always having to

count it out to somebody else.

But me and my brothers... I wish

you could have seen us in the money...

coin striking coin, coins rolling

like runaway wheels across fields

of green and brown linoleum.

You would have thought us proper tellers

the way we stacked together what goes together

--pennies, nickels,quarters, dimes... 

We knew all along the silver,

as Daddy called it, was not ours to keep.

Ours was the feel of it, round and smooth,

the weight of it heavy in the palm of your hand.

Ours was to count it and to know great sums.

And having this, we were content

to wrap it in little banker's sleeves

that tell (in part) what it all comes to.

                              --Betty Spence

"In the Money" received first place in the 1997

National Federation of State Poetry Societies

Founders Award category and was pulblished

in NFSPS' 1997 Encore.

Poems in "Time of Singing", Summer 2011

The following poems were recently published in "Time of Singing" a Christian poetry journal.

Storming
   Isaiah 45:3

There is this
about pursuing
Presence--
you might just find yourself
in that secret place
where storms
go to die.
           BS

Rich in Sunrise

He amassed his wealth
panning for gold
settled at the heart
of sun streams
rivering
an Alabama sky
at first light.
           BS

Quote from "Breath for the Bones" by Luci Shaw

Luci Shaw is one of my favorite poets and writers. Here are a few lines of hers I would like to share with you.

On cultivating creativity, she says, "Among the things that good literature involves are elements of inevitably
and surprise--essential to all arts. A well-wrought work gives the sense that this is the way it was inevitably meant to be, and part of that certainty comes from the surprises in it, words in unusual juxtaposition, fresh ideas that give us a little jolt of astonishment.
     Yet there is another community that informs the creative life: friendship, which is formed with others who share a conviction of faith and a dedication to artistic process."