Bird Notes

With an abiding passion for poetry, Betsy Hughes graduated from Vassar College, earned her M.A. in English from The University of Dayton, and taught English for thirty years at The Miami Valley School. In retirement, she has moderated courses in literature, creative writing, and the arts for The University of Dayton Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Her appreciation for poetry continues to be nourished by her writing friends in the Wright Library Poets and the Dayton Poetry Circle, as well as the Ohio Poetry Association and Ohio Poetry Day. Betsy Hughes was winner of the 2013 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Breaking Weather was published by the NFSPS Press in 2014. Her poems have also appeared in the Society of Classical Poets Journal, the Mad River Review, Mock Turtle Zine, and several anthologies published by the Ohio Poetry Association, including the recent ekphrastic anthology A Rustling and Waking Within. Betsy is fascinated by the sonnet genre because of its inherent qualities of sound and rhythm and its wedding of discipline and freedom. Many of her sonnets relate to nature, as in this collection. Others employ the traditional form for contemporary subjects, with special focus on environmental, social, and political issues.