Two years at an assisted living facility (as the primary caregiver of her favorite relative, a celebrated character actor) kept Judith Mary Gee at a very high emotional pitch. Following his passing, she returned to her own residence bearing a grief bordering on breakdown. Finding solace in music, dance, and various other art forms, Gee gradually resumed practice of her own longtime craft, writing poetry.
Gee's work has appeared in Chautauqua and is scheduled to appear in The New Guard, as well as in the second volume of Global Insides, an anthology of work created during the current pandemic.
Her poems depict unthinkable loss (of love, limb, life, lucidity) resulting from war, disease, or occupation in startling-sometimes fantastical-images.
A Sarah Lawrence College graduate, Gee was a protégé of literature professor Harold Wiener, whose tales of corresponding with John Galsworthy, dining with Greta Garbo and Rudolf Nureyev, and mentoring Lesley Gore were inspirational, amusing, and indelibly imprinted on her memory. Having studied poetry with Cynthia Macdonald (Gee was her teaching assistant), Jane Cooper, and Jean Valentine, she believes her writing skills assist in self-healing.
Now sheltering in place, like many of you, Judith Mary Gee offers her Edges of Wanting.
