Lisa D. McCraw Newell
Lisa D. McCraw Newell
excerpt from the Foreword
I first met Lisa D McCraw through the online poetry community, which, in recent years, has grown into a thriving and multi-cultural universe, powered by social media, mobile applications, and cloud storage. The new culture of sharing and connecting has created a niche for up-and-coming poets who learn with one another and push one another up in their craft, both creative-wise and business-wise, and build a name for themselves, slowly but surely, in the process.
Lisa’s poems have that spark, that heart. She is able to connect to her readers because she writes sincerely—she writes for herself, in her own voice, about people and things that matter to her. And in that sincerity are snapshots of her, her character, her past, her dreams.
I am fortunate enough to witness her evolution as a poet, in selecting more and more complicated and multi-faceted subjects and stories as well as in being more and more daring with her structure and lyricism. You can practically see Lisa’s heart growing braver and more beautiful, by following her work.
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And just like a career with a solid foundation, Lisa’s artistry took rime. Along the way, she read the works of her contemporaries, appreciated, shared, commented, and learned from them. (I am proud to say I am one of those contemporaries.) Through this, she helped many poets and allowed herself to be helped as well. Lisa’s opening herself to the “heart-works” of others became a way for the same people to be open to what she has to offer.
In a world that has become quick to criticize and dismiss, where so many upcoming artists are crying for attention using the same tools of technology, I find it refreshing to make more organic connections such as the one I have with Lisa. It is friendship, cemented through the years by our mutual devotion to reading and writing poetry. I genuinely want Lisa to succeed and honestly can’t wait to watch for the next chapters of her heart—and her poetry. That’s why when I heard that she recently got the chance to have her pieces printed in a book, I felt so happy and proud of her. Of all people, she is one of the most deserving to have her artistry available to a larger audience, because her heart is in it. And with an attitude to poetry like hers, the relevance and the mastery of execution of each poem just naturally follow.
Iris Orpi
poet, fiction writer
Chicago, Illinois