Performing Arts Studio

Second Sunday Poetry will feature Audrey Streetman reading from her work on February 12 at 2:00 pm in the Norman Depot, 200 S. Jones Avenue.

Streetman began writing poetry in 1973 and has published three chapbooks: The Train, A Gathering of Bones (a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award) and Keeper of the Dream. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies to include Crosstimbers, Pegasus, New Plains Review, ByLine Magazine, Poet Magazine, Oklahoma Today, and Blood & Thunder.

A graduate of Durham Business College in Waco, Texas, Streetman attended the University of Central Oklahoma and is a graduate of the Commercial Lending School at the University of Oklahoma. She earned her living as a banker for thirty-five years, having started at Liberty National Bank & Trust Company in 1973 as a secretary. She worked her way through the ranks in a 1970s male-dominated profession, where she eventually became a commercial loan officer and earned over time the title of senior vice president.

Retired from banking, Audrey now writes full time.  Her most recent project, titled The Well, is a memoir about growing up poor in Texas with a mother who attempted suicide on Easter Sunday when Audrey was eight years of age.  The book, from which she will read only briefly, chronicles not only her psychological and spiritual journey, but her professional life as well.  She has three daughters and eight grandchildren.

Enjoy refreshments and the abstract paintings of Carolyn Faseler in the Depot Gallery while attending the free poetry reading.

THE BROKEN BOWL

I want to return
to that place where
the oak stands tall

where its branches
tell stories and poetry
lives on a dirt path.

I want to return
to that place where
love lives in a
simple teacup
a saucer with milk

a blue bowl broken
by Miss Mattie whose
name I remember when
I return to that place

 Audrey Streetmen