Today we’d like to introduce you to Alice Teeter.
Alice, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was born in Winter Haven, Florida, back when it was the Citrus Capital of the World, Home of Beautiful Cypress Gardens, the city of 100 Lakes, and the Center of the Universe. Now it’s only one of those things. I began writing poetry when I was 10 years old and have been writing ever since.
I majored in Creative Writing/Literature with Peter Meinke at Eckerd College and then moved to Atlanta in 1975 — just for the summer. It’s been a long, strange summer… When I first came to Atlanta, I worked as a short-order cook at Jagger’s Restaurant in Emory Village and the Great Southeast Music Hall at Broadview (now Lindbergh) Plaza. Then for several years, I worked as a landscape maintenance gardener at Corporate Square Office Park and for a landscape company that went all around Atlanta to apartment complexes. I worked as a typesetter on phototype machines for the Georgia Commercial Post, Alpha Printing & Mailing, and AAA Printing. I was a member of the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance and also the Webster’s Writing Group.
I created a lot of flyers for Lucina’s Music, a production company that brought women’s music artists to Atlanta. I created album covers for local musicians like Elise Witt. My group of friends would have potlucks where we would all bring dishes created with blueberries and the next time it would all be tomato dishes. I switched to Macintosh computers and became a production artist. I worked in a factory that made art for cardboard boxes, then for Safeguard Business Systems setting up checks and business forms, and later for companies that produced direct mail, initially marketing accidental death insurance to banks’ clients, and lastly producing direct mail and email marketing for animal care societies around the country.
I trained as a massage therapist and practiced that craft part-time for many years. For several years, I served as an adjunct faculty teaching poetry writing to undergraduates at Emory University in Atlanta. I gave my employer a year’s notice that I would retire and immediately freaked out. To comfort myself, I started a secret, imaginary affair in 1963 with Arlene Francis (NY actress on What’s My Line in the ’50s and ’60s who died in 2001). I retired in 2019 and gave myself a year to do nothing. When the year was up, COVID hit so I began a novel about my affair and am almost done with the first draft. I live in Pine Lake, Georgia, with my wife Kathie deNobriga.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
After many years, I decided to start submitting my poems for publication. A friend recommended I submit a chapbook (a shorter collection of poems) to the Georgia Poetry Society Charles B. Dickson Chapbook Contest. I did and won. In addition to winning, the judge was Lewis B. Turco, a poet I had known about and whose BOOK OF FORMS I had bought and used in high school. It was wonderful.
Then the man who was to shepherd my book STRING THEORY to publication through the Society took a dislike to me. I refused his edits and his treatment of me led me to contact Mr. Turco who said he would take his name off the contest if any of my poems were changed. Mr. Turco suggested I add more poems to the collection and send them to his publisher. I did so and it led to the publication of WHEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU… Writing poetry is enjoyable for me. Submitting poetry for publication is hard work and feels like the opposite of writing.
I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My poetry is sensory, evocative, accessible, and contains depth and humor.
My current favorite poems that I wrote are “Atomic Lineage,” “18th Century Spanish Love Poem,” and “The 103rd Birthday of Emma Regina deGraffenreid Smith” (a double sestina Kathie helped me make into a movie that’s on my YouTube channel), and the one long poem that is HERE, AT THE END. I write poems that include nature, family, love, and sometimes toilet paper.
If we knew you were growing up, how would we have described you?
Florida when I was growing up had a lot of wild places along with citrus groves. We were outside and barefoot much of the time. We spent time in boats. We picked oranges. We drove down highways and spun grapefruit out the window to watch them split in half as they rolled. I have an identical twin sister (she’s very beautiful), and an older sister and we had a younger brother who died in 2020. We were all close in age and stayed close to our parents after we grew up and left home. Our only two first cousins also lived in town, as did our paternal grandparents. We rode our bikes out to our grandparents to swim in their lake.
After Christmas, our grandfather would drive us around in his grove truck and we would pick up all the Christmas trees we could find and have a bonfire in the pasture next to his house on New Year’s Eve – lots of marshmallows were roasted – I usually couldn’t wait and burned mine, but envied my older sister’s patience in browning hers to perfection. We all took music lessons and played in the same orchestra. I played violin, my older sister viola, my twin cello, and my younger brother also violin. My mother accompanied the orchestra on the piano.
My father played clarinet but was notoriously tone-deaf. Ellen and I had a group of 3 other friends who sometimes spent the night together and watched “Shock Theatre” Dracula and Frankenstein movies. We called ourselves the “VWA” (Vampires, Werewolves Association) and ate cold pizza or hot dogs for supper. Ellen was a vampire, and I was a werewolf. Ellen was more science math, and I was writing literature. She took Spanish and I took French.
Pricing:
- When It Happens to You… $12.95
- Elephant Girls $17.00
- Mountain Mother Poems $14.99
- Here, at the end $14.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alice-teeter-poetry.square.site/
- Instagram: teeteralice
- Facebook: AliceTeeterPoetry
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/alice-teeter-37513611
- Twitter: @TeeterAlice
- Youtube: @TEETERAL00
Image Credits
Jayne Cobb for STRING THEORY, Trisha Hadley for WHEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU, Mariusz Prusaczyk for ELEPHANT GIRLS, Shao-Chun Wang for MOUNTAIN MOTHER POEMS, and Elizaveta Karandaeva for HERE, AT THE END
