Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and rescue dog handler. Her poems have appeared in America, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. Her most recent collection is Casualties (Coal City, 1995).
Taylor Graham is a featured poet in the latest edition of Poet's Market. The reviewer, Patrick Souhan, says this "poet finds voice in search-and-rescue work." He describes how Graham, a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler, takes the poet's metaphor of "lost" to the literal; "she has created a powerful narrative voice for herself: the 'search' poem," he says.
Poet's Market is considered a leading guide on where and how to publish poems and poetry collections. It is an annual reference book available in most libraries and includes 1,800 places to publish poetry. In ten insider reports, editors and poets provide tips of the trade for aspiring poets.
Graham's profile features her stirring poem, "He Was Wearing a Yellow T-Shirt." It describes the loss of a young boy "in a vivid, unsentimental (yet not uncompassioned) way, evoking sobering, somber and often startling images--images that stay with the reader long after the poem has been read."
Taylor Graham's advice to poets is summarized at the end. "I think the hardest thing is for a poet to find his voice. Sure, we can learn a lot by reading and even imitating other good poets. But, finally, we have to find our own voice because the best things we write nobody else could have written."
Graham is an editor for The ACORN, the quarterly journal of the El Dorado Writers' Guild; guest editor of Mockingbird of Davis, California; a member of Sacramento Poetry Center, Bay Area Poets Coalition, and The Academy of American Poets. She is a recipient of a grant from Poets & Writers. Her search-and-rescue poems have been collected in a small volume entitled Casualties, published by Coal City Review.