Roma-Deeley, Lois 1952–

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Roma-Deeley, Lois 1952–

PERSONAL: Born March 3, 1952, in Amityville, NY; daughter of Louis (a sales manager) and Josephine Masucci (a homemaker) Roma; married Peter M. Deeley, Sr. (a manager), February 28, 1970; children: Peter M. Deeley, Jr., Melissa Deeley Rothlisberger. Ethnicity: "Italian-American." Education: Arizona State University, B.A., 1985, M.F.A., 1988; Union Institute and University, Ph.D., 2000. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Home—7781 E. Journey Ln., Scottsdale, AZ 85255. Office—Paradise Valley Community College, 18401 N. 32nd St., Phoenix, AZ 85032. Agent—Steven Swerdfeger, publisher, Star Cloud Press, 6137 E. Mescal St., Scottsdale, AZ 85254. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, poet, and educator. Arizona State University, Tempe, lecturer, 1990–96; Paradise Valley Community College, Phoenix, AZ, professor of English and poet-in-residence, 1996—Northern Arizona University, Phoenix, adjunct professor, 2002–. Poetry co-editor, PKP Forum, 1996–.

MEMBER: Academy of American Poets, Associated Writing Programs, Poetry Society of America, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society (Arizona State University Chapter president, 1994), Italian-American Writers Association, Arizona State University Faculty Women's Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ragdale Foundation writer's fellow, 2003, 2005; Emily Dickinson Award in Poetry, Universities West Press, 2003; Allen Ginsberg Award in Poetry, Passaic Community College, 2005; Paumanok Poetry Awards, Farmingdale State University, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Rules of Hunger (poems), Star Cloud Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2004.

NorthSight (poems), Singularity Press (Scottsdale, AZ), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Looking for Home: Women Writing about Exile, Milkweed Editions, 1990; Bella Figura: A Choice, Malafemmina Press, 1993; Classical Antiquity, Pig Iron Press, 1994; The Journal Book for Teachers of Emerging Students, 2000; and the Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology, Universities West Press, 2000, 2001, 2002. Contributor to periodicals and journals, including Calapooya Collage, California Quarterly, Chants, Columbia Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Confluence, Controlled Burn, Dissertation Abstracts International, Elixir, Faultline, Iris, Italian Americana, Oregon Review, Oxford, Paterson Literary Review, Pinyon Poetry, Riverrun, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Timbuktu, and Waterstone.

SIDELIGHTS: Lois Roma-Deeley is a poet and educator who conducts undergraduate and graduate writing workshops. Her first collection of poetry was published in 2004 as Rules of Hunger. Peter Huggins, reviewing the book in Phi Kappa Phi Forum, made particular note of the "careful precision of her observations" within the poems. In "The Given," the narrator states, "Plums should be cold, / in a glass bowl and offered to children." In "Storytelling," Roma-Deeley, in the voice of the narrator, relates that "I'm in the airport watching the clouds / roll onto a tarmac sky." She "marshals these observations in the service of a threshold experience: that moment when you put your hand on the door and then, taking the risk, you push through into the unknown," Huggins commented. In service to this underlying theme, the first section of the book offers recurring images of doors, of moving through and moving on, away from the past.

NorthSight, Roma-Deeley's second book of poems, also glides forward on a theme of movement, this time of traveling. Here, the trip is taken "through society's underside," a world populated by tattooed girls; victims of rape, abuse, and incest; prostitutes; bikers; department store customers; downcast laborers; and the mentally ill, noted reviewer Barbara Crooker, writing for Pedestal online. Crooker remarked favorably on Roma-Deeley's work in NorthSight, noting that "These are hard poems … but there is an unwavering honesty, a clarity of vision." Upon encountering the collection's first poem, "The Road out of Town," Crooker wrote, "We know … that there are going to be difficult stories to hear." In this poem, the narrator uses a spontaneous, random trip out of town as a means to forget about love. The speaker in "Apologizing for the Rain" offers unheard apologies for both minor transgressions and natural phenomena beyond her control, in a futile, tragic attempt to atone for imagined sins against an implacable tormentor, whose heavy, menacing presence is felt just beyond the edges of the poem. Numerical details form the precision of "Abacus," imposing structure on the emotions attending a young wedding. "In terms of craft, Roma-Deeley always seems to be in control," Crooker observed. In the end, the critic found some hope for the survivors of these works, as Roma-Deeley "takes these stories into her body, and makes art out of them."

Roma-Deeley told CA: "I am an Italian-American feminist. My grandmother came to this country in 1914. Secretly, she went to night school to learn to read and write English. When my great-grandfather found out, he beat her with a silver cane, which cracked her head open. Despite this, I write from my experiences as the grandchild of strong Italian women and good Italian men. My work is informed by growing up in a bilingual home—that is, my poetry reflects the cadences of both English and Italian. My writing process is that I need lots of silence and light.

"Only in the silences of light do I hear the poetry before I have written. The subjects that have inspired me are the nobility of the spirit as it lives its 'uncommon ordinary life,' feminism, the stories of the confused, conflicted and the 'slightly insane.' I combine forms—that is, I use experimental forms and combine them with traditional forms."

Roma-Deeley more recently noted that "sound and place shape my work. When I was about twelve, my older brother, Nick, then a college student, would read poems aloud to me. After that, I read every poetry book I could find. I fell in love with how words could fall onto a page, sometimes making loud thuds, other times barely making a whisper. One day I found myself wanting to do the same.

"My first collection of poems, Rules of Hunger, and my second collection, NorthSight, seem to have become the first two parts of a trilogy. It might also be said that the writing of these books is a result of my own personal journey to and from 'the self.' Further, it is a journey toward, away from, and then back again toward poetic form, themes and a personal, gendered history.

"With regard to my writing process: poetic form has long been an obsession with me. I studied form at Arizona State University when I was pursuing my M.F.A. degree in the late 1980s. In my poetic forms class, I learned, firsthand, about the 'magic' that can happen if a poet allows the form to take hold of the 'sympathetic imagination.' For me, the study of form—a poetic approach which I, at first, rebelled against with much wailing and gnashing of teeth—was a real turning point in my creative life. I struggled mightily with the various techniques we graduate students were required to study and use in our own work. In addition, I opened my craft and imagination to new ways of approaching the page. In doing so, I encountered new themes and subjects for my work.

"I want to crystallize the unseen. I hope my books—and the poems within them—will become for the reader a holographic experience. That is, I want my books to draw readers into a world of wonder, bewilderment, and possibility. I suspect, if my poems can achieve these ambitions, they will do their work—that is, have their 'effect'—with or without my permission."