Thelma Richie Homer

Thelma Richie Homer was born in 1933 in Atlanta, Idaho, a mile-high mountain town on the Middle Fork of the Boise River. During its heyday, miners camped under nearly every tree, one of whom was her father, Fred. He also moonlighted in moonshine, and his life came to an untimely end in November of that year in a small café on Main Street, with two bullets in his body. His death changed the author’s life forever. The family moved to her mother’s parents’ home in Elko, Nevada, where her sister, Katherine Darlene, was born in July, 1934. When her mother remarried and moved away, the children stayed and were raised and educated there. The poem “Easter” in Part One of Lunatics, Lovers, and a Poet reflects and honors Ms. Homer’s extraordinary grandmother who, with only a 5th Reader education in Germany and alone after the death of her husband, sacrificed much without complaining. She raised eight children and four grandchildren.

Her oldest son, Pete, agreed to further Ms. Homer’s education, and in 1950 the author left for the Golden State to attend the famous California theatrical school, the Pasadena Playhouse. The theatrical school opened doors to a world of creativity that she could not have imagined and a love affair with Shakespeare that continues to this day.

Ms. Homer was never a girl poet, but during her sojourn at the Pasadena Playhouse, she composed original sonnets for speech class assignments rather than reciting those of known poets, wrote verse introductions for musical projects, occasionally presented a poem to friends because she could not afford the money for a card, and wrote one act for a three-act play as a rough draft in playwriting class. She could not have cared less for writing; acting was her aspiration.

Following graduation and after pursuing jobs at several theatres, she thought she should return home, work, save her money, and then head for the bright lights of New York. In the fall of 1954, she appeared in a melodrama in Elko, where she met the man who would become her husband, and so she stayed. Because she was in love, New York seemed a million light years away. The true bright light of her life, however, daughter Karissa, was born in December 1955. During the years that followed, she found time to work for the County as their Real Roll Tax Supervisor; appear and contribute to the local theatre group, the Silver Stage Players; take classes at the Community College; enjoy numerous artistic endeavors; and start a successful investment club. Never in all this time did she write a line of poetry.

The desire to create something never left her. In one of Ms. Homer’s life-improvement phases, she passed the Real Estate exam in 1973 and for thirty years strove to excel in this profession. When she retired in 2003 at the age of 70, she began putting some thoughts on paper to explore who she was and express who she had become.

A friend, Megan Birak, sent Ms. Homer a compendium for developing the creative voice. Then another friend, Sarah Sweetwater, invited her to read for Poetry Night once a month at the DLC Gallery and Bar, and so it seems that the decision to write was not hers but that others led her down the path. She followed, and Fate simply carried the pen. At her age, she writes so that she can leave something tangible to her family and to all those she loves. With poetry, the end is always in sight, and she can put her soul into its brevity.

Currently, she has finished a book of American Haiku in collaboration with internationally-known artist, Tsolmon Damba, entitled 39 Ripples on a Stream. She is looking forward to finishing several more works of poetry.

I do believe that everyone lives a double life, whether it is imaginary or real, and that the poet should retain some mystery, some curiosity, and leave it to the reader to echo the music and vibrancy of the poems in relationship to their own lives.

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