About

Laura E. Garrard

Poet & Artist

Contact me

Welcome to Poetry In Time, a blog of poetry and imagery to inspire personal responses. As in the lives of many, 2020 created much change in my life. After a wind of events, I landed in Olympic National Park due to my husband’s work. Now I awake beside a lake to eagle calls. Fortunate, you bet. Planned, not so. At first our move felt impulsive. However after a short while, I discovered what disconnection to my past work and community could offer–an opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with nature and therefore with myself.

What is joy, really? Who am I without title, reputation, or achievement? How do I heal? What is nature telling me? What are my true callings, and is this an important question in this timing of my life? These are questions that may be the backdrop of Poetry In Time. However, the first priority of this creation is to organically and spontaneously interact with the wilderness surrounding me and write in response.

I am the student of ancient evergreen needles, moss, and bark. I am the observer of water fowl swimming and diving off the lakeshore. I am the listener of lapping waves, woodpecker knocks, and eagle soars. I walk, sit, tarry, witness. I respond on whims. I sit still for a while and sit longer still. When my body moves in its own timing, I am then ready to return.

Radical return to self also stems from the realization that we are not separate from the environment web, no matter our house walls and technology. Nature, along with our own part in it, has knowledge I desire, and beyond that a true friendship I require. Perhaps she points the way back to myself, a girl poised on a rock beside California’s Clear Lake, writing a poem about an eagle in flight with no one else in sight.

Poetry is wonderfully subjective, as with art. I hope that you enjoy experiencing my personal responses to the natural, the human, the wild, and the wild within. When you’re moved to thought, I invite you to comment and participate. Then create your own love story.

I Create in Response to Nature, Beauty, Thought, and Life
  • Become Still
  • Observe & Listen
  • Respond
  • Create

BIOGRAPHY

Laura began writing poetry in childhood, and in youth two of her poems were published in children’s collections in Northern California. Her recent poems have appeared in journals like Amethyst Review, Tidepools, The Madrona Project, TulipTree Review, Silver Birch, and others. Her current awards are a Merit Prize and Pushcart Prize nomination from TulipTree Review for the poem, “Hugging Alder.” She was also a finalist in Bellevue Literary Review’s 2025 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry for “Homage to My Radiated Hip.” She writes a cancer poetry series for Penn Medicine’s OnkoLink.org, Poetry That Fits. Her first chapbook, Paddling the Sweet Spot Between Life and Death, will be published by Finishing Line Press in March 2026 with presales opening Nov. 24, 2025. Her most recent award is an Honorable Mention from MoonPath Press for her full-length book submission to their Sally Albiso Award.

In 2020, internationally renowned interior designer and author Agnes Bourne selected one of Garrard’s poems to include in her book, Moments, published by Commonplace Books. Subsequently, Garrard collaborated with Bourne to create a second book, Potpourri: Poetry, Prose, and Pictures (2023), which includes 40 of Garrard’s poems and 20 of her photographs among contributed works of 22 artists and writers. In 2022, mentoring poet Gary Copeland Lilley selected her as a Tieton LiTFUSE Poetry Festival Scholar. She was awarded four scholarships by Centrum to attend writers conferences in 2022-24. Currently, she is submitting her full-length poetry books for publication.

Garrard holds a master’s degree in news-editorial journalism, with focuses in literary journalism and women’s studies, from The University of Tennessee-Knoxville. For over 10 years, she worked as an independent proofreader for Rutledge Hill Press and Thomas Nelson Publishing. She worked as an editor and production manager for Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt University Press books and coordinated a project for Oxford University Press. She also has worked as a publishing copyeditor, graphic designer, print production manager, and yoga instructor. For 15 years, she operated a Jackson Hole holistic bodywork practice providing Reiki, manual lymph drainage, CranioSacral Therapy, and therapeutic massage. In early 2024, she opened a Port Angeles, Wa., practice (Attuned Healing), offering CranioSacral Therapy, sound healing, and Reiki. She lives at Lake Crescent with her Park Service husband and two beagle-border pups.