Overview

Sheila grew up with two sisters and a brother. They shared their lives with the ghosts of her mother's three siblings all of whom died tragically, one as a baby, one at the age of four and the last, her mother's brother, at the age of 18. Sheila's family moved every 2-3 years as diplomatic families are required to do. As a result, she spent, off and on, most of her childhood living in Holland, going to a Dutch school. She learned a 2nd language, learned to monitor her speech because of her father's work, and lived in a culture where her mother's intense grief was not treated as it would be today. Sheila's main outlet became her poems which detail how tragic experiences and debilitating grief, when untreated, have the power to damage following generations. This collection of poems reveals how it is possible to grow from the darkness of turmoil towards the light, but life is complicated, and darkness and light intermingle, coloring one another. This collection is about feeling and being unseen. The poems aim to evoke a sense of what it feels like to be unseen, even emotionally banished. The poems move as the poet does, towards feeling seen. Sheila does not presume that her experience has been the same for everyone but hopes, while respecting individual journeys, that her work resonates with others.

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Sheila Dietz grew up in the Netherlands, attended a Dutch school and began conceiving of the world in literary terns at an early age. Her family moved every 2-3 years, and she experienced all the chaos and dislocation that life entailed. The world she created by writing became her one true and safe home. Sheila has been a Bread Loaf Scholar. She has received an Individual Artist Grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Numerous poems in The Moon's Eye appear in her collection The Berry and the Bee which won the 2023 Gerald Cable First Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She received an MFA from Vermont College. She worked as a librarian at the New Haven Free Public Library for many years before retiring as Head of Reference Services. Sheila is the co-founder of the Salt and Pepper Gospel singers (from New Haven, Connecticut) which is reflected in her work which is often, though not always, spiritual in nature.

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