Paul J Willis – författare

Getting to Gardisky Lake switchbacks from roadside maples to backcountry sequoia groves, from the lost curves of a high school track to the shining calves of Olympic hopefuls, from grade school crushes to married affection, from Jefferson’s slaves to Sherman’s march, from dumpster diving to shopping the mall. In this rich collection, Paul J. Willis invites you in and ushers you out to meet your neighbors and yourself.

Thirteen-year-old Erica Pickins does not want to play the piano--and she definitely does not want to go to England. But her father must take family and students for a fall semester abroad, and her mother insists she still practice, every day. In England, their new home becomes Hengrave Hall, a sixteenth-century manor house presided over by a group of nuns. While exploring with her new friend Pedro, Erica walks through a chamber door…into the Year of Our Lord 1578. There she is startled to find a music master in doublet and hose impatiently waiting for her. He mistakes her for Margaret, the elder daughter of the house, who is late for a lesson on the virginal--a forerunner of the piano.It seems that in a matter of days Queen Elizabeth will arrive on a formal visit, and the girl is to play for her as part of the planned entertainments. Erica has no choice but to play along and pretend that she is Margaret. With a little help from her brainy friend Pedro, and after making a few whopping social blunders in welcoming the Queen of England, Erica manages to pull off her final performance--but not before the real Margaret reappears at exactly the wrong moment….

From California coastal redwoods to giant sequoias in the Sierra, from practical jokes of adolescence to unexpected epiphanies marking an academic career, the many poems in Somewhere to Follow range through the life of a poet on the lookout for what comes next. In this his seventh volume of poetry, Paul Willis ascends the switchbacks of ordinary experience to cross paths with song-leading rangers, exhausted mothers, dirt-loving children, terrified immigrants, Arctic climbers, face-masked students, beatified counselors, rejected suitors, honest morticians, talking ferns, mourning crows, stinking fungi, vengeful rivers, raging fires, faithful brothers, the world''s largest pinecones, and an innocent pair of twin grandsons. Also present in these pages are the Virgin Mary, Sir Philip Sidney, George Vancouver, David Douglas, John Muir, Ernest Hemingway, and the inimitable Ruth Kerr of the Kerr Canning Jar Company. Throughout this collection, one hears Willis''s unique tone: quietly observant, worldly wise and yet still full of wonder, alert to the surprises and vistas that can only be found by striking out on your own. Take the path that each poem offers and find for yourself Somewhere to Follow.

Say This Prayer into the Past reckons with cadavers in the family closet, a house lost to a wildfire, and the heartbreaking beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. Along the way, Paul Willis rekindles the delights of children, the kindness of students, and the solace of the many writers of the past who have accompanied us. These poems speak into the trials and joys the years have rendered. Their purpose is to bless those of us who mourn and to bring some measure of comfort.