about

Constance Clark is a poet with a lifelong curiosity of words and literature. Yet, it wasn’t until after three careers, the last of which helping teenagers unlock a wider world of human experience through literature, that she began writing poetry. In retirement, she finally had the time to pursue creativity.

Her exposure to poetry was significantly shaped by teaching AP Literature and Composition for several years before she retired. She studied many of the greatest poems ever written—poems by Shakespeare, Basho, Keats, Donne, Eliot, Williams, Bishop, Frost, Dickinson, Yeats, Plath and more—alongside students and fell in love with the art form. She started writing her own poems in October 2022. In May 2023, she attended the Iowa Poetry Writers’ Workshop, which immersed her in contemporary poetry and workshopping.

Clark’s first published poem, “Sticks & Stones,” appeared in the Moonstone Press Sylvia Plath Remembrance collection in October 2023. Following that, “The Cliffs of Slieve League in November,” a poem inspired by a trip to Ireland, was accepted by Litbreak Magazine in December. Recent writing is published in Vita Poetica, Fourth River, Kosmos, Fresh Words, Poetry Super Highway and Moonstone Press anthologies. Currently she is at work on her first collection of poems.

Clark began her work life as a trade magazine editor in vibrant and exciting New York City, which she loved having grown up in the Midwest. She married her college boyfriend and later moved to New Jersey to raise their three children. In northern NJ she became a Kumon franchise owner during the early years and then taught high school English at the Academies at Englewood and Dwight Morrow High School where she also headed the English department for a number of years. She holds a master’s degree in Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is a certified NJ Teacher and Supervisor, and she is also certified to teach yoga.

Clark now lives in central NJ within driving distance of her three children and two exuberant grandchildren.

Her poetry, coupled with her connection to nature, and her community of people, including her family and others committed to expression, culture, friendship, and generosity, sustains her. She hopes you will find comfort in poetry, a context she feels is essential in our warming troubled world, and perhaps a transformation of being it offers.