Donna De Julien

I am a retired teacher, who has gone back to school to learn everything I may have missed from a student's point of view! I have been taking classes through the Mira Costa College Senior Community Learning Center in Oceanside and via Zoom classes. I'm not at all surprised that I'm learning new things every day, and I'm meeting some really wonderful people along the way.

I taught English, Social studies and academic support classes in Carlsbad unified School District for 31 years. Before that I taught Kindergarten for seven years in Escondido. I have an adult daughter in graduate school, where she studies Environmental Science. I am reading Where the Past Begins by Amy Tan. On the weekends I'm partners in a dog sitting, training, and rescue business in Encinitas. 

I live and indoor-outdoor sort of life, wherein I raise chickens and enjoy horticulture; I'm currently splitting African Violets and remounting stag-horn ferns for the holiday give-away at my house.

In the visual arts I'm currently exploring collage using wood and wire, while in the Life Writing class, I am enjoying the lessons on Memoir and Poetry writing in various forms. The poems I've entered are some of the results of that class this semester. As writers in doubt, always ask a new question, or ask an old question in a new way! Our minds have tremendous power to guide and encourage us, if we only get out of the way and allow the language to roll out like the best pie crust, simple and sweet.

A sense of universal consciousness, which I call “Spirit,” in whatever form it takes, acts as a guiding force. We can access this Spirit to navigate our increasingly manufactured and mechanized world. I seek to center the Spirit, so the body can follow. What do  I want to say to and with my art? We are closer to perfection than we realize! 

My art attempts to "treasure the local" and rely on recycled and found materials, including found words for the poem, "Left, Behind." I hope to examine the different word-forms this dynamic spirit may take in our lives. Another poem, "Condor sighting," is about my dad's death and passage into eternity. I view death as transformative, even as it is loss. My work expresses an assurance that this natural world persists within and around us at all times. "Living Zen on a Busy Street," is a poem about meditation in the moment we call, "Now." Life is filled with considerable noise and distraction. Can I live in a spiritual center despite living in the midst of chaos? In our environments and ecosystems, we share the capacity to transform the world and ourselves by our responses to the Spirit of life. My works balance the interplay of spiritual themes in poetry on companion topics. 

ddejulien@sbcglobal.net

CA

USA