"As a child, I never considered being a poet ... I wanted to be Madame Curie."
Former Poet Laureate of the U.S. National Library Service, 2000-20001, Billie Dee earned her doctoral degree from the University of California at Irvine. Her poetry evolves from her diverse life experience, with dual careers in both the arts and medical sciences.
Billie grew up surrounded by the once vast orange groves of Southern California. She spent her childhood summers in the wilderness of Montana, an experience which deeply colored her aesthetic vision and self perception as an "epi-suburban" writer. Her poetry evolves from her diverse life experience, many years of intensive personal journal writing, and "... passionate, voracious, omnivorous reading."
Billie is a familiar face at West Coast poetry venues and an enthusiastic fan of spoken word performance. Although she writes in many genres, her recent work has been centered on English language haiku and like forms, including the image-text juxtapositions of haiga. She is especially interested in sensory detail and what she calls "... those odd moments in life that snap you into new awareness." |
