Slow Blooming Gratitudes

A finalist in Finishing Line Press's 2017 NEW WOMEN'S VOICES CHAPBOOK

COMPETITION, Slow Blooming Gratitudes is Vermont poet Sarah W. Bartlett's second

chapbook. Her poems invite readers into moments of transformation, healing and presence.

"These are no ordinary poems of love, loss, letting go, courage, and universality," writes

Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, publisher and editor of the Aurorean poetry journal. "Rather

... they are extraordinary poems ... masterfully crafted ... extending the hand of welcome

to each reader."

Ellaraine Lockie, award-winning poet, nonfiction author, contest judge, and educator says

the language of this collection "seeps into the reader like a slow, soft massage" in its

capacity "to offer solace and acceptance in times of adversity."

Sarah's poetry and prose appear in Adanna, the Aurorean, Minerva Rising, PoemMemoirStory,

Mom Egg Review, Ars Medica; and highly-acclaimed anthologies, including the award-winning

Women on Poetry (McFarland & Co. Inc., 2012). Her first poetry chapbook was Into the Great

Blue: Meditations of Summer (Finishing Line Press, 2011).

In 2010, she founded writing inside VT, a weekly writing group inside Vermont's sole women's

prison to encourage personal and social change within a supportive community. Now in its

eighth year, the program hosts an active blog (www.writinginsideVT.com) and continues to hold

readings and book talks based on the 2013 publication of HEAR ME, SEE ME:

INCARCERATED WOMEN WRITE (Orbis Books). Sarah co-edited this anthology of writing

and art by 60 early program participants, and has published a number of pieces as well as

delivered two keynote speeches about the work.

Sarah was greatly influenced by her father, a world-class chemist devoted to making the world a

better place. From him she learned the value of community and a love of words at play. Sarah

spent the first 25 years of her professional life using language in service to planning, marketing

and public relations for non profit organizations. Sarah's current work as change agent and poet

draws on the full range of her experience and prior training, including a doctorate in health

education from Harvard and certification as a mediator. Language remains the medium for her

life work creating communities that support individual transformation and healing through

writing, as well as her own creative writing. Like the hummingbird who has taught her to see

deep into the heart of things, she seeks to awaken the soul to presence.

Her reflections on both external and interior worlds draw from her life and homes in the Vermont

mountains and Massachusetts shore, where she lives with her husband and pets.