Loretta Diane Walker teaches music at Reagan Elementary in Odessa, Texas. She graduated from Ector High School, received a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Texas Tech University and earned a Master's of Elementary Education from the University of Texas at the Permian Basin. Loretta is active in her community through membership in organizations such as, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and the Permian Basin Poetry Society. She is also a member of the Texas Music Educators Association, the Poetry Society of Texas, the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, Texas Mountain Trail Writers, the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and serves as a volunteer at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center. Loretta is a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her poems and essays appear in publications throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK. Her book Word Ghetto won the 2011 Blue Light Press Book Award. Miss Walker was elected as the 2014 "Community Statesman in the Arts" by the Heritage of Odessa Foundation. ABOUT IN THIS HOUSE BY LORETTA DIANE WALKER: Loretta Diane Walker's house of poems is majestic and delicate at once - immense in depth of vision and perception and tenderly sensitive in all the ways human beings need a house to be - with places to sit and remember, to treasure, and to tend. Her vibrantly descriptive poems honor the hardest days and rooms of being and believe in the beams of light coming back to us, once again, through the windows. They are poems as rich and wise as a profoundly conscious life. -Naomi Shihab Nye The deftly-written poems of In This House sing of life and loss, of illness and the courage to survive. Loretta Diane Walker's poems inhabit the world of the body in struggle with diabetes and cancer with both honesty and tenderness, just as they do the world of the heart. To borrow a line from the poem, "Barbara," these poems "blast beauty into the long chorus of night." -Cindy Huyser, poet and editor, author of Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems In these remarkable poems, Walker writes not only of courage in the face of adversity but also of motherhood, family, gender, race, the bounty of the natural world, and the nourishment art provides to the hunger of the human soul. Her talent as a musician infuses her lines with a haunting musicality which complements her mastery of image and diction. Walker's poems glow on the page like candles in the darkness. -Larry D. Thomas, Member, Texas Institute of Letters, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate Loretta Walker shuttles through the curls of emotions in her powerful book of poetry, In This House. Describing her mother's decline through diabetes, the delicate state of siblings comes through poems such as "In the Waiting Room." Mama was rolled in with two legs;/ she will be rolled out with one./ We are waiting/ to see who can hold back tears the longest. There is story here. Story of strength and stamina. I will give you an orange dress, Mama./ It is the only color brave enough to carry your darkness/ in its pocket. We are touched by her portrayal of her nephew's broken heart in "Shrine of Hormones" Because I love you more than the day you were born, / I will not tell you she is just the beginning. Her lines are clever, moving; words that linger long after the poem, such as in "Jack" Jack Daniel's been feasting on liver, / without onions, since before the depression. Walker is a poet on the rise, her words like a mantra to all who read, such as in "How to Fight Like a Girl" You must learn to walk/ through the day with a fish of fear/ floating through/ the coral of your belly. Read this book. Keep it in your nightstand. You will reach for it again and again. -Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate
In her powerful new collection of poems, Day Begins When Darkness Is in Full Bloom, Loretta Diane Walker takes us on harrowing journey, authenticated by striking and imaginative attentions-a testament to the strength of one woman's spirit faced with adversity, "the colliery of darkness," both physical and emotional, personal and cultural, local and historical. The range of these poems far exceeds their considerable force as personal narrative alone. "The sky is a mortuary for stars," she writes. "A lone bulb attempts to touch its round shadow." Here we find the play of a mercurial mind whose sober confrontation with mortality, illness, and marginalization moves seamlessly, with lyric inflection, toward understanding, affirmation, and an inclusiveness of vision and heart. A remarkable achievement. - Bruce Bond I am lucky to have met and heard Loretta Diane Walker read her poems on many occasions, so when I was reading this collection, I listened for a voice I knew well: a soft, precise lament, on the edge of tears, drenched continually by unexpected pain and grief, yet still rising again and again to the light of hope, most evident in what I have always admired in her craft, the original metaphor, unique to the poem, and to me, yet still apt, piercing in truth, shining like a familiar star in the ink of the night, just like, as she writes, the "faces of angels you can only see in darkness." - Laurence Musgrove, author of Local Bird and The Bluebonnet Sutras, editor of Texas Poetry Assignment. I love these poems, these calculations of hope that emerge from a colliery of darkness fueled by cancer, racism, the pandemic and loss. I love how Loretta Diane Walker wrestles with the world as it is and emerges again and again with clear, rich poems that wash the soul in light. This is a collection of healing and hard-won hope. It opened me. - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush and Naked for Tea The poems in Day Begins When Darkness Is in Full Bloom are informed by a deep grieving for both the lyric speaker's own personal suffering, and that of our larger world. We see in Loretta Walker's richly imagist poems human suffering in its many forms - whether that be one's growth into adulthood without the presence of a faithful parent, or the pain and uncertainty of a cancer patient's ongoing treatment, or the challenges each of us now face daily as we live in the midst of a global pandemic, or the individual and social turmoil engendered by racial bigotry, and its consequent injustices. Walker's is a necessary grief. It is the transformation of that grieving that leads her to the balm of the natural world, and the predictable cycle of seasons tethering us to the earth. The book's arc leads both poet and reader to praise this life, to celebrate the time we each have in our world - the poems themselves enacting survival, salvation. - Robin Davidson
A very dear friend asked Loretta, "When are you going to write a novel and make some real money? You have some great ideas." Her answer for now is this. Novelists take ideas and create stories. Poets take a word and create a universe. If one is blessed to be both, what a gift they are to the world. One day she hopes to write a novel. But today she is a poet and music teacher at Reagan Elementary in Odessa, Texas. She graduated from Ector High School, received a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Texas Tech University and earned a Master's of Elementary Education from the University of Texas at the Permian Basin. Loretta is active in her community through membership in organizations such as Texas Music Educators Association, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and the Permian Basin Poetry Society. She is also a member of the Poetry Society of Texas, the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, the Poetry Society of Oklahoma, Abilene Writer's Guild, the National Federation of Poetry Societies, and the Texas Mountain Trail Writers. Loretta believes kindness is a language in and of itself, she hopes to speak it fluently. She also believes when children speak, listen. There are treasures in the syntax of their innocence. Endorsements: Loretta Walker's Word Ghetto is a rich multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of Life, turning your mind and senses like the Milky Way galaxy, while freeing your heart to embrace your Oneness. Who would have thought Kali, the Black Goddess, was living in West Texas disguised as Loretta Walker? And like Kali, Loretta Walker crushes your separateness with her enchanting dance of Life through the Word Ghetto. Read it and be free. -George E. James, Author of Peeling the Onion: Poems of Spiritual Awakening and Copperhead: Tantric Lessons on Love. Loretta Diane Walker writes with compassionate wisdom and insight-her poems restore humanity. -Naomi Shihab Nye Loretta Walker's Word Ghetto is an astounding book, full of wisdom, compassion, and masterfully woven word magic. Her language speaks with a rich tapestry of emotion, and her poems sing like a saxophone playing the music of her soul. Loretta Walker's vision is huge - she speaks for a whole community of people who are marginalized by the circumstances of their birth. Her poems offer healing, vision and hope." -Diane Frank, Author of Blackberries in the Dream House and Entering the Word Temple In this accomplished book, Loretta Diane Walker, poet, musician and teacher, draws us into her word music, and convinces us to inhabit her deepest concerns -children, race in America, pain and forgiveness, the changing body, the open soul-to revel in language and life with her, to wonder and to grieve. Walker finds beauty so thoroughly entrenched in the quotidian, we are glad to enter her world, even though it is not untarnished. Her fierce poems temper hope with honesty, conviction with clarity of vision. Startlingly fresh without posturing or distraction, they pull us from whatever routine threatens to dull our senses. From the tenderness of the teacher to her young students, through memories of her childhood, and her involvement in the lived experiences of others, she holds a mirror to the revelations of a grounded life. -Mary Kay Rummel, Author of What's Left is the Singing
Through compelling terrain both earthy and spiritual, sundry lives emerge overlaid with mystery. Vivid, searching poems like these elicit our shared sorrows, hopes, sensibilities. And horizon-wide, they evoke compassion wherein vulnerability is our light.
This is the personal story of a psychologist living with an emotionally abusive partner and her struggles, both personal and institutional, in leaving. No Room to Breathe: A Memoir of Emotional Abuse, Motherhood, and Resilience is a cautionary tale that reveals the often publicly unseen and underestimated dynamics and patterns of emotionally-abusive relationships. It also highlights their potentially far-reaching consequences, particularly when attempts are made to leave the relationship, and children are used as pawns. As a licensed therapist for more than 30 years, Dr Coha worked with many challenging people. When it came to her personal life however, her professional credentials as a clinical psychologist and clinical social worker did not help her to avoid entering into an emotionally-controlling relationship. Loretta’s experience speaks to many people’s lives. Her story covers many complicating factors and powerful forces, such as health, children, the involvement of the judicial system, and the fact that her partner was a public figure. Although her significant other was a woman, the life-impacting results are the same for anyone who has ever been involved with a controlling partner. No Room to Breathe is ultimately an inspiring account of a woman using her personal strength to break away and create a new, healthy life for herself and her children.
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