Transmutation

Finalist, 2021 Blue Light Poetry Prize

Paula Camacho is the President of the Nassau County Poet Laureate Society which selects and supports a Nassau County Poet Laureate every two years. She is a breast cancer survivor and participated in various poetry organizations over the years. She moderated the Farmingdale Poetry Group for 20 years. She taught a poetry class, You Can Write Poetry, in the Adult Education program at the Farmingdale High School. She served on the Nassau Council for the Arts for three years. Her poetry has won various awards, including the Alice Abel National Literary Contest and her haiku poems won first place for five consecutive years in the Performance Poets Association Haiku contests. Her published books include Hidden Between Branches, Choice, and More Than Clouds. She holds degrees in Nursing and Theology.

While the world outside knows "famine, pestilence, / wars and rumors of wars," Paula Camacho, with eloquent grace, invites us into her private sphere of transformation.

From inside her cottage, her garden, nature's bountiful beauty is a catalytic transformer - "birdsfoot violet, red trillium, pink bleeding heart" - so even if just for "a few tender moments," she knows tranquility, while "heaven and [she] connect."

She transforms in the grand peacefulness of a meditative state, where "mortality is an illusion," in "small wonders" of "simple moments," when her wakened eyes can find sunlight through shadows, and her "mind empties" with focused attention, as at a sparrow's "little leaps/ from shrub to magnolia tree." She even translates herself into a beach painting's "lone memory."

- Gayl Teller, Nassau County Poet Laureate 2009-11, Walt Whitman Birthplace 2016 Poet of the Year, Author of Flashlight: New and Selected Poems (WordTech/ Cherry Grove, 2019)

Paula Camacho's chapbook, Transmutation gives a fascinating glimpse of self-examination and insight through reflections and observations of nature. Her precise language paints vivid images bringing the reader into her observations and introspections portrayed in snapshots of flora, fauna, and landscape. Her words evoke an awareness from the reader felt by the perceptiveness of the writer. Read Paula Camacho's poems, feel the spirituality and experience Transmutation written on paper as well as your soul.

- Peter V. Dugan, Nassau County Poet Laureate 2017-19

Paula Camacho's poems present moments of quiet observation as the seasons change. Her lyrical descriptions of "begonias blooming around the house like a necklace" and " I see one lone magnolia blooming and rejoice" are original and emotional. Throughout her celebration of nature, she is acutely aware of the ending of things. This beautiful, sensitive collection was a pleasure to read.

- Evelyn Kandel, Nassau County Poet Laureate

The poems in Paula Camacho's book, Transmutation, invites the reader to share how the delicate balance of nature and the seasons of time interact and shape our everyday lives even to the moments of the extraordinary.

Every poem is a delight to your senses in its own unique way.

- Maria Manobianco - Art Teacher, Artist, Poet