Sterling

WESTMINSTER — Compiling her new poetry collection was cathartic for author Karen Elizabeth Sharpe, providing the opportunity to focus on and showcase not only her creativity but her spiritual journey.

“Prayer Can Be Anything” from Finishing Line Press has been a long time coming. The former journalist and newspaper editor published her first book of poetry, “This Late Afternoon,” nearly 20 years ago but her relationship with poetry began well before that.

“I’ve been writing and publishing poetry since I was a child,” Sharpe said. “I had an upbringing that had no formal religion and I learned about the various organized religions through osmosis and later, by intentionally wanting to learn more. From there, I settled into my own understanding of spirituality and my connection to life and the world. Prayer, in my view, can be anything, any act of faith, of reverie, of honoring, of supplication, of truth-telling, and of hope. It can be the act of writing, of focusing on a minute detail, a meditation, or a commitment.”

The Central Mass. native grew up in Shrewsbury and lived in Sterling for many years before moving to Westminster. She attended Holy Cross in Worcester right after high school but dropped out, got married and had two children. She went back and finished her undergraduate degree in English at Clark University, also in Worcester, and later earned a master’s degree in communication at Fitchburg State University.

Sharpe has been writing for most of her life. She was a journalist early in her career and the editor of the former Times & Courier and MotherTown Monthly and has been a contributing writer to Worcester Magazine, The Boston Globe, and a variety of higher ed publications. She is the Assistant Vice President for Leadership Giving at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a job she is deeply dedicated to.

“I work to build long-term relationships with alumni donors to guide their philanthropy in meaningful ways, to enable students to succeed through scholarships, research funds, and more,” Sharpe said.

Her love for poetry began at a young age and “was nurtured through a rough childhood by several wonderful teachers” in the Shrewsbury public schools, most notably retired educator Patricia Pennucci, whom Sharpe said she is “still fondly connected to.”

Sharpe revealed that after her father died when she was a girl it was Pennucci who introduced her “to a number of the great poets that are accessible to children” — Frost, Dickinson, and others, like Anne Sexton, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams.

“I write poetry because it is the vehicle through which I find valuable creative expression and a means to capture and understand the moments of the world around me,” she said.

The title of her latest work comes from the final poem in it, “The Surety of This Late Winter Night,” which she said, “is about finding faith in difficult circumstances.”

“Prayer can be a pile of roadside stones, beseeching / The quicksand sorrow invokes / The hemlock across the lake / supplicant in thin-needled halo light. It doesn’t have to be / text, wafer, or baptism /  two hands pressed, rosary clicking,” the first several lines of the deeply profound poem read.

Sharpe regularly publishes individual poems of hers in literary journals from across the country.

“It’s an exceptionally competitive art form with a tiny audience,” she said. “When I transitioned to a career in higher education, I originally worked in communications and wrote for, edited, and managed a number of college publications, marketing materials, and alumni magazines. Now, though I focus on my poetry.”

Asked about her writing process and how she overcomes challenges such as writer’s block, the prolific poet admits she has “terrible, terrible dry spells, years of them.”

“My creativity has been deeply affected by stress and, to be honest, an imposter syndrome that kept me hamstrung at times,” she said. “One of the things I’ve learned over the years, though, is that everything you want is on the other side of fear. I wanted to get over my imposter syndrome and keep writing and so I found ways to do it and made myself do it. It’s like exercise and athletics. You can’t get better by not practicing. So now I practice, like yoga, so it’s a muscle I keep in shape.”

She workshops poems with “a tremendous group” of Boston-based poets almost weekly and said that they are all working on some level of publishing whether it be putting together manuscripts or getting the fruits of their labor out there. While it can be challenging to keep up the creative flow, Sharpe is fully committed to continually honing her skills.

“I go in and out of a daily morning practice of writing and lately have been trying to fit it in small moments here and there in afternoons, weekends, nights,” she said. “It’s not an easy craft.”

Sharpe is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review literary journal, a former member of the board of the Worcester County Poetry Association and also on the steering committee of the inaugural National Baseball Poetry Festival to be held April 28-30 in Worcester.

She is lining up and participating in a number of poetry readings this spring and summer, including two in Worcester — Poet-Pourri, an evening of poets, storytellers, and humorists on May 18 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in the Worcester County Poetry Association Boardroom at the Salisbury House, 61 Harvard St.; and Arts in the Garden with musical performers Chuck & Mud on June 29 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at The Community Teaching Garden, 3 West Boylston Dr.

With it being National Poetry Month and ahead of “Prayer Can Be Anything” launching in print in July, Sharpe said she is available for interviews, readings, phone calls, “and of course book sales.”

“Most people don’t realize that when you publish a book the hard work continues right up until it’s published,” she shared. “Right now, my book is in what’s called pre-sales, the period of advanced orders which the publisher uses to determine how big the press run will be,” Sharpe said. “Selling is not generally in the poet’s wheelhouse, but we need to pre-sell books in order to be successful. It’s kind of like a GoFundMe, except that you get my book instead of making a charitable contribution.”

Sharpe said her family, friends, “poet peers and colleagues are of course thrilled” about her new offering.

“Some were a little surprised too,” she said. “I don’t generally talk about what I’m working on outside of my poet-circle. While some people knew I had been publishing for a while, not all knew I had worked out a manuscript.”

A link to the book, individual poems and some audio and video readings of her work are available on her website at karenelizabethsharpe.com.