A retired Gilmer County educator who’s become known for her inspirational writing has happily released her first collection of poetry and lyrics.
Lucy Harris, who leads the monthly Storytelling in Ellijay meets for Gilmer Arts, said being involved in those gatherings, where storytellers convene to hear and tell tales, was instrumental in the origin of “The Butterfly Writes Across the Sky: Poems and Lyrics to Encourage and Inspire.”
“They were like, ‘We want (you to do) a book! Why won’t you do it?’ For years, I said I’m not going to do that,” said Harris, who was content posting her poems and other writing on social media.
“I post on Facebook every day with a picture (or some writing). It’s like a hobby,” she said. “About eight months ago, I got to really thinking about it and realized that I should start gathering all that stuff together.”
Harris taught school here for 22 years before retiring in 2007. She enjoyed teaching various subjects including English, Spanish, creative writing and mythology. As an intervention coordinator, she helped Gilmer High students figure out what they wanted to do after graduation, and that was also a really good experience, Harris said.
“It was a program for kids who needed some extra help to make it through high school, kind of like a mentoring program,” she added. “I taught them English, but also coordinated their schedules and helped them try to get on a career track.”
Harris had taught students about poetry in her classes, but she didn’t become a practicing poet until several years later.
“Though I’d taught it for many years, it wasn’t really something that turned my tap, so to speak,” she said. “Then, about 15 years ago, I had three friends who were going through some tough stuff, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”
That resulted in Harris hurrying to write down on paper the segments that would become her first poem, from which the book’s title is derived. It would eventually become one of many. The book contains almost 500 poems and lyrics, she noted.
“Ever since then, I’ve been writing every day. It just hit me,” Harris said.
Another push toward writing poetry came when Lucy and her husband, Rick, were compiling the book, “Simply American: A Gentle Warrior and His People,” about their son, fallen U.S. Army soldier Noah Harris, who was killed in Iraq in 2005. When going back over her son’s writings, some of which were poems, something clicked with Harris.
“I had no intention of writing poetry. I’d wanted to write a novel. When we were editing Noah’s book, I started to understand a lot more about poetry,” she said.
Harris often uses the beauty of nature as inspiration for her poems and songs. She’s also inspired by people she knows or has met.
“I’ve always been one of those nature people, who’d rather be splashing down a creek or climbing a mountain,” she said. “I’ve just always been that way.”
Although Harris is happy that “The Butterfly Writes Across the Sky” is now seeing a release, putting the book together was somewhat of a challenge, she admitted. She credits Rick for being an in-house publisher and taking on other tasks that helped the project come together.
“As soon as he started figuring it out, he was on it. He really had fun with it,” she said. “(For me, the editing process) was worse than any term paper I ever assigned to a student!”
arris said she never liked the way poems look on paper, so she decided to print the book’s poems in a more condensed format, which helped her include more content in this volume and give each chapter a specific theme.
“The chapters are each called ‘A Time to…,’ such as A Time to Reflect, A Time to Begin, etc.,” she said. “You see several poems, then a song, then more poems. My dad was a civil engineer and he would say, ‘You always have to have fixed visual relief.’ The songs are that fixed visual relief.”
arris will celebrate the book release with a signing event at the Gilmer Arts Playhouse Saturday, Aug. 26, at 2 p.m. The event is free to attend and open to the public. The author will have copies of her book for sale and is contemplating doing a reading from its contents.
A novel may still be on the horizon for Harris, who will also continue to do poetry.
“I’m open to (doing a novel). I’ve been tinkering with some ideas,” she said. “When you get older, you need to keep learning and keep doing. This has been a very spiritual kind of experience, and I have learned a lot.”
In the meantime, Harris will continue to lead the monthly storytelling meets, which happen each fourth Thursday at the downtown Ellijay playhouse.
“It’s pretty amazing. We have some people who actually come from as far as Dahlonega, Big Canoe and other places. Storytellers will travel for hours just to tell a story to a group of people, which is wonderful,” she said.