Roberta Roy's collection Slivers reads as subtle and modest meditations on her experiences as a woman, as a teacher (how I know her best), and as an intellect of delicacy. It's not often that one publishes a 'collected poems" that reads as an autobiography. Her language is straightforward; she eschews pyrotechnics. But she laces these poems with quiet surprises by details that require re-reading because they explain so much. I especially appreciate the quiet details in "Variations": "And the futility of each unsalted meal/ And Nan and I know that each of us knows/ And the careful silence cannot conceal/ Our joy at a masculine step." Her poems of Spain are rich with experience and imagery, her "Lincoln Thoughts" is evocative of those benign but unexplainable thoughts from our youth, and her poem "A Friendly Visit" saves the day with surprising image of closet doors having fun. All in all, an enjoyable read from a talented woman whom I am glad to know.
--Edwin Webbley, MA from The Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury, VT; thirty three years an educator in public and private schools; many years a teacher at the New England Young Writers Conference (NEYWC); regular contributor to VT Addison County Zig Zag Lit Mag.
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Roberta M Roy is the winner of the Jenkins Living Now Award for Inspirational Fiction for her well-researched and poignant novel Jolt: a rural noir, the story of life after a nuclear meltdown and its sequel, Two Close: a story of survival.
Slivers is Roy's first book of poetry and represents biographical insights she has written across her lifetime. Generally delicate and light in tone it is marked by a certain seriousness of purpose the reader may find moving. In other, Roy has written and edited The ALVA Axiom Anthology of Interviews with Authors and a collection of essays, Straight from the Robin's Nest. Roy has dedicated her life to travel, language learning, writing, her family, and her profession as a licensed speech language pathologist. For the last ten years she has served an elementary aged population of emotionally disturbed children in Rhinebeck, New York.
