Growing Older: A Life in Alaska’s Rainforest by Margo Wasserman Waring
Margo Waring’s poetry is tuned to the pitch and roll of the seasons. Just as spring returns cyclically to Southeast Alaska’s beaches, forest paths, and mountain peaks, youth too ebbs and flows in the present tense, permeating old age. In this, these poems teach us to let memory carry us forward with the same agility that it carries us back. I will listen to my stream, writes Waring. Hear it dissolve in the sea.
— Corinna Cook, author of Leavetakings
Margo Waring writes beautifully of place, time, memory, and aging. Her years of attention to the changing seasons and climate of southeast Alaska uncover, like March’s melting snows, her awareness of life’s gifts and the losses that come to us all.
— Nancy Lord, former Alaska writer laureate and author of Fishcamp, Beluga Days, and pH: A Novel
Cirque Press Author — Margo Wasserman Waring
A decision to move to Alaska for a year or two changed the direction of Margo Wasserman Waring’s life from an academic career path to something richer and more varied. Margo grew up in working class Brooklyn with her parents and twin brother and began an academic life (New York University, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin) of study and teaching. Wanting to move to the West Coast, she and her then husband detoured to Alaska in 1969, anticipating an adventure for a year or so. She still lives in Juneau, Alaska where she worked as a legislative staffer, policy analyst and planner in state government in natural resources, environmental conservation and health services until her retirement. Post retirement gave her more time for public service and activism, serving on the local school board and focusing her activism on the League of Women Voters and climate emergency. She shares her life with her husband, Douglas Kemp Mertz, son, Edward Mertz, and several beloved dogs. Inspiration to write poetry came later in her life. Margo is forever grateful for the encouragement and support of her writers’ group. Margo’s poetry has been published in Cirque, Tidal Echoes, Alaska Women Speak, electronic venues, and locally at Bus Omnibus and Writers Weir.