Starfall in the Temple

Prartho Sereno has made her home in a bamboo hut in India, a 150-year-old farmhouse in Maine, a spiritual community in Oregon, an uptown apartment in Southern California, and for the past 23 years, a funky upstairs duplex north of the Golden Gate Bridge, which she shares with her boat-rowing sweetheart. Along with painting & poetry Prartho has dabbled in such art forms as taxi driver, family therapist, Phys Ed instructor at Cornell University, housecleaner, single parent, head cook, amateur singer/song-writer, illustrator, and palm-reading psychic in various Catskill resorts. Author of the award-winning collections Indian Rope Trick, Elephant Raga, and Call from Paris, and author/illustrator of the IPPY-winning gift book, Causing a Stir: The Secret Lives and Loves of Kitchen Utensils, Prartho's other published works include a poetry chapbook, Garden Sutra, a song/music/poetry CD, Salt, and a book of essays, Everyday Miracles: An A to Z Guide to the Simple Wonders of Life. Poet Laureate Emerita of Marin County, California (2015-17), Prartho was awarded a 2005 Radio Disney Super Teacher award for her 22 years work as a Poet in the Schools, the Marin Poetry Center's inaugural Rilke Award (2023) for nurturing the poets, a Marin Arts Council Individual Artist Grant in Poetry (2003), and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University (2013). She is founder of the ongoing poetry writing series: The Poetic Pilgrimage: Poem-Making as Spiritual Practice, now online. The most dependable remark on Prartho's early report cards was "Easily distracted and distracts others."-a comment she has done her best to live up to.