Susan Wooldridge -- poemcrzy@shocking.com
website: http://www.susanwooldridge.com

Susan has a B.A. in anthropology from Barnard College and an interdisciplinary masters in art and writing from CSU Chico, Chico--where she developed a love for performance art as well as collage, printmaking and ceramics. She's held workshops on creative language with thousands of adults, children, youth-at-risk and teachers.  Susan likes to write and hang out at one of her several "offices" on the banks of Chico Creek.  Currently she's also spending time on a houseboat in Sausalito when the owners (international mediators from Holland) are off helping bring peace to the world.

Susan's book poemcrazy:  freeing your life with words was published in 1996 by Clarkson Potter/Random House. Anne Lamott wrote, "This is a wonderful book--smart, wide-eyed, joyful, helpful, inspiring.  You're going to love it, and love writing poetry more for having read it.

poemcrazy was a Book Sense (independent bookstore) pick. The hardcover edition went into five printings and was featured for over four years by Quality Paperback Book Club as well as Writer's Digest Book Club. The paperback edition came out in 1997 (Three Rivers) and is in a fifteenth printing. Though most widely used by adults, poemcrazy is on the New York Public Library List of Outstanding Books for teens. Painters and songwriters as well as film makers and actors report that poemcrazy helps them loosen up, play and embrace a more creative way of being in the world. A photographer writes in Camera Arts magazine that he uses poemcrazy in his "Photoshop Master" class because "it says everything about the creative process."

Susan's chapbook of poems, Bathing with Ants , was published in 2004 by Bear Star Press. Her new book, Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing (and Freeing Your Creative Process) was published by Harmony (Random House) in June 2007.   Naomi Rachel Remen, MD., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes, " Foolsgold ?....in a word, beautiful.  Beautiful, beautiful!   And, of course, a book that may save your life." 

Susan will be teaching again this spring at ArtFest in Port Townsend Washington, She recently completed a fourth spring series to foster creative expression among people of all ages and backgrounds at workshops in rural California libraries sponsored by Poets and Writers organization and UCLA's Center for the Book. Her library workshops were featured in the March/April edition of Poets and Writer's Magazine .   Susan presents workshops and readings throughout California as well as in the Butte County Juvenile Hall School.

Susan helps people begin to delight in language and imagery.  She encourages everyone to begin a collage journal and carry it everywhere. Some of her workshops now include collage with found objects in small boxes as well as journals.

Susan, whose two children have grown and migrated to San Francisco, lives in a co-housing village in Chico, California, at the edge of Bidwell Park (or Sherwood Forest)--where Errol Flynn's Robin Hood was filmed.


Bathing with Ants

The ones I try to save stumble
from the crumpled washcloth
or slip in the valleys of my fingers
six thread legs akimbo.

No rain for months
and ants sip at the faucet,
rush into the bath.
Brother ants wander bewildered
on the rim of the tub.

There's nothing pure as an ant, purged
by busy-ness, walking through, and carrying.
Though they live in tunnels of dirt
these ants are clean,  
clean as bubbles, even in death.

And I, floating human,
know that even just being
I've never been so clean.

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