Meet PAUL FORD-President of Valley Winds Chapter

Paul Ford has led the Valley Winds (Salt Lake City) chapter since the summer of 2008. He was initially drawn to poetry while grieving the loss of his wife a year earlier. He found chapter meetings provided a safe and supportive community to bring poems dealing with a life forever changed. Paul also manages the UTSPS website, utahpoets.com, and is always interested in hearing about poetry news and events, those with broad appeal are posted to the Utah State Poetry Society's website.

Having worked his whole career in Information Technology, Paul volunteered as the technical editor from 2008 to 2013 for the UTSPS annual Panorama poetry anthology. This editing work led to an opportunity in 2010 to take on an assistant editor role for the quarterly poetry newsletter, Strophes, published by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (UTSPS is a member of NFSPS). After two years of assisting, Paul was appointed in 2012 to be the Strophes editor. See nfsps.com for the National Federation of Poetry Society's activities and a link to the current Strophes issue. Paul was elected in 2014 to the 4th Vice President position with NFSPS, and has attended the last three annual NFSPS conventions and plans to attend this year's convention in St. Petersburg, Florida.

HAIKU by Paul Ford 

Shared dreams turn dry-ice
mist, blow away unnoticed
with her final breath.

TREASURES

Dad’s old jacket

is mottled with sun-bleached

drips from dogs and burgers,

too many family picnics to recall. 

My favorite poetry volume

has pages spattered

by food-smudged fingers

digging for diamonds solo. 

Yes, I would trade.