Clenece Louise Roberts Hills

Eleven Feet per Minute Clenece Louise Roberts Hills

Clenece Louise Roberts Hills has written poetry throughout her adult life to record her intellectual insights, explore the language she loves, honor the people whom she loves, and to celebrate events such as the Douglas County Bicentennial (1976) and the Lawrence, Kansas Sesquicentennial (2004). Clear in her poetry is a love for her husband who grew up driving combines for the wheat harvest as it ripened from south to north at the rate of eleven feet per minute. Several of her poems reverberate with the indelible legacy of Big Band music left behind by her father - an engineer and drummer - who was taken suddenly from his family by a heart attack at the age of 50. Likewise, her poetry exudes a deep admiration for her mother who - at age 43 - boldly confronted the daunting task of raising four children between the ages of two and 18 on her own. No inspiration, subject or perspective is off limits. Angels. Marketing. Self-Esteem. The right to die. Heart transplants. Morning glories. The loss of a young student to a car accident. Poetry itself. She even writes from the perspective of her own dogs.