My Father's Branch

Ruth Housman, playwright and storyteller, found herself years ago drifting towards poetry. She has been an avid poet ever since. An ardent bibliophile, loving books and especially little bookstores, Ruth's fascination with the stories we tell, brought her to graduate with advanced degrees in speech therapy, and later, psychiatric social work. Ruth founded The Company of Writers, a writers' haven in Cambridge, MA two doors away from The Plough and the Stars. Ruth's love for poetry led her into a long-term participation in the Boston based poetry workshops led by Ottone Riccio, a beloved master teacher and poet. Her deep love of linguistics, particularly the metaphoric language of poetry, is a hallmark of much of her work. She bravely and uniquely crosses from English into other languages as she traverses the realms of poetry. When we truly hear words, something magical unravels.