You are never too old to start a new interest, just ask Sarah Yerkes. She was in her nineties when she started taking poetry classes. Now at 101, she published her first poetry collection, Days of Blue and Flame.
101-Year-Old Publishes Her First Poetry Collection
Yerkes has always been a creative person. She’s had careers of being a landscape architect and then as a sculptor. She worked as a sculptor into her early 80s. When sculpting became too physically painful, she turned to poetry.
Even though she claimed she wasn’t a poet, her instructor Bonnie Naradzay disagrees.
“I loved the fact that she is a sculptor. I realized whaqt a lively and intuitive mind she has– or nshould I say, imaginative. She said it was kind of like doing a sculpture.”- Bonnie Naradzay
The publisher, Passager Books, focuses on older writers. They appreciated how Yerkes told her life’s story in imaginative ways.
Yerkes says that she shares feelings that she hasn’t even shared with her family. The act of writing the poems was therapeutic, though.
“I was just writing for me. I didn’t think of it being in the public domain or that anyone would be interested.” -Sarah Yerkes
Read more here.