Cobb County woman shares poetry over the radio

Posted 6:38PM on Friday 1st March 2002 ( 23 years ago )

MARIETTA - Linda Ellis has enjoyed writing poetry since she was a child, the kid who helped classmates with their poetry assignments. But it took her grandmother's death to take Ellis from poetic obscurity to ``the poet laureate of the airwaves.'' When Margaret Janek died, Ellis found pages of poetry that her grandmother never shared with anyone. That's when Ellis vowed the world would hear her own poetry. Her first poem hit the radio in 1994, when Atlanta country-radio personality ``Moby in the Morning'' read her poem ``The House on Ellis Lane'' on his WKHX show. Moby went on to read more of her poems on the air, and Ellis soon was giving poetry readings live for The Delilah Show on KONO 101 FM in San Antonio, Mix 107.3 in Washington and KMPS in Seattle, among others. Ellis' most famous poem so far is ``The Dash,'' which refers to the punctuation between the dates of birth and death on a tombstone. She wrote ``The Dash'' after reading a letter circulating around her office. In the letter, a woman battling cancer asked readers not to regret the lives they had lived. ``The Dash'' has been published numerous times, most recently in the books ``Healing Grief,'' a New York Times bestseller by James Van Praagh and ``The New Success Rules for Women,'' by Susan Abrams. One man who read the poem at his brother's funeral e-mailed that the poem changed the way he lived his life. Ellis keeps a copy of the poem on her bulletin board so she can see it everyday. Her first poetry in book form, ``A Bouquet for Mother,'' will be released in April.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/3/198075