Karen's Biography

I am a 39 year old Lesbian, Libra and mother of two, living in Toronto. Having survived breast cancer, a radical mastectomy and then four very aggressive rounds of Chemotherapy in 1997, I am now living life to its fullest. My goal has always been to have my poetry published, and to make a positive difference in the lives of other womyn.

In grade four, I won a class contest for the best poem/song, and a few years later was awarded first prize for a poem about running away from home. It described, in a young child's words, the pain and despair felt when witnessing the daily beatings of my mother, by my alcoholic step-father. My escape from the terrifying reality of my life was found in the pages of my journal.

I have been seriously committed to writing poetry since I was twelve years old. In my later teens, I started using the freedom of the pen to really express my love for womyn. As I became more accepting and embracing of my sexuality, my poetry became more free-flowing, and more alive with emotions, smells, colors, even sounds. Recently, I put together a collection of my best work, entitled "Inspired Woman". It contains over 60 poems about love, loss, and life as a lesbian. My dream now to is see "Inspired Woman" on the bookstore and library shelves where it can help to uplift and inspire womyn everywhere. To this end, I have been submitting my poems to various sites on the Web, with the hopes that those who read them will share them with the womyn they love. My poems were written with passion, and I would be most gratified to know that they were being used to spread love.

My life is now shared blissfully with my beautiful partner, and our amazingly intelligent rottweiler, Bravo. I have been grooming, showing, breeding, training and rescuing dogs since 1982, and somehow find time in all of this to put pen to paper. Through my poetry, I embrace all the womyn who have ever dreamed, hoped, loved and achieved.

Many of the works I have written celebrate the beauty of womyn loving womyn, and express the intense draw I had to those I have been privileged to love. My intent with these "Poems of Fire", is to have readers know the longing as I felt it; to cause their hearts to pound as mine did while writing the words.

Having also been the unfortunate victim of the loss of some amazing relationships, I have also written poems that relive being caught off-guard by the end of a love; words that describe what it feels like to have my whole body turn cold. There is a chill that goes through the veins, unshakable and unwarmable. When times like these come, I take my pen and write about my despair. Then, when I read those same words in the future, I think to myself,

" Wow, that poor girl. I guess I shouldn't complain. I don't have it half as bad as she does!"

Sometimes I like to dabble in different themes and genres, as well as experiment with poetry styles. One style I have become quite fond of is the Haiku. Occasionally, I arrange individual Haiku to form a longer, more colorful poem. I also have enjoyed writing very short, but to the point poems, that I call " Snippets". These poems are all 20 words or less, and were formed by playing with magnetic poetry tiles. Some that turned out to be particularly colourful became parts of a greater poem, with each individual Snippet becoming a stanza.

I love to hear feedback about my poems, and I encourage all womyn to express themselves through the beauty of words. Write like no one will ever read it, and your true feelings will be free to flow without self-judgement or second-guessing. Most of all, embrace life.

"Inhale every breath as like it is filled with roses!"

Karen Godson aka Sapphos_Poet