Irma’s Seed: Beach Poems and Life Poems

Irma’s Seed is dedicated to, and inspired by, the author’s high school English teacher, Irma Eareckson, whose brilliant year-long homework assignment in her 1961-62 creative writing class has been long remembered by students who benefited from its challenge and breath of scope. Miss Eareckson asked each student to write a novel, whose chapters were presented in different forms of creative writing, including a short story, free-verse poem, sonnet, one-act play, traditional chapter narrative, convincing dialogue, soliloquy, rhyming poem, etc.-in whatever order the student selected so long as the novel was coherent in the story line, within and among the numerous writing forms. The motto of The Principia School is As the Sowing, the Reaping, and this volume of beach poems and life poems, published many decades later, may be said to have sprung from Irma’s seed. Irma Eareckson’s challenging gauntlet thrown to her students so long ago is reflected in the variety of poems in this collection, including haiku, a bit of doggerel paying homage to Ogden Nash, limericks inspired by Edward Lear, and an assortment of autobiographical verses that steps beyond the personal to the universal.