Traces of the Past: A Book of Poems

Traces of the Past: A Book of Poems is a collection shaped by memory, longing, and the unfinished conversations we carry through life. Drawn from experiences between the ages of 14 and 28, these poems reflect on love, absence, regret, and the search for meaning across the late 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s. Within these pages are missed calls and unanswered letters, difficult choices and lingering losses, chance meetings with people once loved, and questions about the world we leave to those who come after us. Some poems are intimate and elegiac; others are wry, skeptical, and quietly humorous. Together, they explore how the past remains with us, not only as pain or nostalgia, but as something that continues to shape how we see ourselves and move forward.

Author Bio:

Born in 1943, Sherry Devereaux Ferguson spent her early years in the US (Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Indiana) before following her Scottish husband to Canada in 1972. Undergraduate studies at Louisiana State University focused on Theater and English, after which she completed an MA at the University of Houston and a PH.D. at Indiana University. A long academic and consulting career included professional speechwriting for government ministers and politicians and publishing with Oxford University Press (NY and Toronto), Sage Publications (CA), Greenwood Publishing Group (CA), Transaction Publishers (NJ), Irwin Professional Publishing (now McGraw-Hill, NY), and Communication University of China Publishing House (Beijing). The mystery and time travel novel Caught in Time (Dragonfly Spirit Press, 2016) marked her entry to self publishing. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada.