Rosemary Herbert

The exuberance of receiving an acceptance message promising publication of one's work never gets old. I am honored to report that my very playfuyl sonnet, written in Shakespearean form and full of allusions to The Bard's Sonnet 116, will be published in Writes of Spring, an anthology forthcoming in Spring 2027 from Tupelo Press. Does that seem far in the future? Patience will be rewarded by the excellent editing and book production for which Tupelo Press is well known. 

In a scene like this, who can complain about no rainy days for summer reading? A week-long lakeside stay in northern New York state was centered on all sorts of lively and delightful family activities, including leisurely pontoon boat rides on this lake. The family time resulted in a break from reading a poetry book per day during the month of August as I participated in The Sealey Challenge along with a group of poets brought together by poetry ambassador exraordinaire, Deborah Liepziger, whose book Story & Bone, I reread in early August as part of the challenge. While the poet shows versatility, verve, and deep sensitivity addressing a range of heartfelt emotions, I especially appreciate Deborah's exuberance in poems that offer literally touching detail, and allow us to rejoice in sound and sense. In my view, artfully writing about joy can be more difficult than portraying pain. Deborah achieves this, with great and admirable aplomb.

As an island girl - raised on the shore of Long Island, New York, and for five years a resident of Cousins Island in Maine's Casco Bay -- it is always a joy to return to the Maine coast, and particularly to Higgins Beach in Scarborough, Maine. Here, the tidal changes are distinct, creating expansive sand bars at low tide and shrinking the beach considerably when the tide is high. I love this stretch of coast at every tide, including the lingering in-between, and this year I made sure to take more beach strolls than ever at dawn and sunset.

My writing time was very much devoted to my passion for writing postcards, not only to longtime friends and family but to members of The Noble Correspondents, a Sherlock Holmes scion society founded by Michael Barton. This very communicative group has a passion for corresponding via snail mail, with some members using vintage typewriters and others using fountain pens or a particular pencil, to write their missives. 

Although I did not produce more poetry, it was nevertheless very happily on my mind, as I am in the process of answering excellent questions for a conversation/interview in the esteemed literary journal Tupelo Quarterly about Sisters in Time, my chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in June of 2026. The poetry in this chapbook is centered on my experience unearthing a pagan burial in a fourth-century,Roman-era cemetery in Winchester, England.

Meanwhile, long beach strolls -- particularly when the mist rolled in making the scene literally atmospheric -- made ideal circumstances for mulling more developments for my thriller, A Man in the House, with its opening scene appearing this month in the British edition of Crimebits2: 100 Opening Gambits for Great Thrillers & Linked Mystery Puzzles, selected and edited by Scottish crime writing luminary Val McDermid. The US editiion of Crimebits2 will be published November 1 and can be preordered here.

The Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia has just released a new anthology, Remembering William Butler Yeats. My sonnet "Look! Stir the Embers" is included in the collection, much to my delight. I can hardly wait to have some copies in hand and to enjoy more of the contents by poets whom I joined in a recent online reading organized by the Moonstone Arts Center, as well as work by other poets whom I have not yet had the pleasure to meet. During the recent reading, I especially enjoyed the variety of apporaches, themes, and styles that were employed by contemporary poets inspired by the great Irish poet.