Sheila Thomas

Originally from England but now resident in Florida, Sheila has worked as an artist for the past twenty-six years. She was much encouraged to persevere with writing poetry when she was awarded a first prize by the Poetry Society of Virginia for a humorous poem about a mosquito. More recently she has won awards in The John Wood Community College, National Federation of State Poetry Societies and Hawaii Education Association competitions, and her poems have appeared in Quantam Leap, The Unorean, Kakako and Time Haiku magazines.

Among her influences, Sheila cites the Welsh poets Dylan Thomas and R S Thomas. 'My paternal grandfather's family came from Carmarthen in South Wales and, as a Methodist minister, he had retained the Welsh accent though living in England; from him, I was steeped as a child in the poetic language of the Bible.'

Two contemporary Welsh poets feature among Sheila's current favourites - Gillian Clarke and Gwyneth Lewis. Her teenage years were spent dipping into Emily Dickinson and John Clare, and then with the Mersey Poets she came around to the idea of urban poetry. She has been writing haiku only for the past five years, and it has caused her to re-appraise the western penchant for 'cramming everything in'. 

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