57 Poems Of & For Life

Lorraine Allen was born and raised in Miami, Florida, a product of Overtown . She attended public schools in Overtown until Booker T. Washington Sr. High School was phased out in 1967. She graduated from Miami Northwestern Sr. High School in 1969. She has always found herself hearing a phrase and then writing a poem or a song from it. At the time these poems were written she was in the process of writing the final chapter of a novel that she had been working on and off for several years. After writing the Mother's Day Prayer poem that was written to be framed for Mother's Day (2002) gifts for family members, other poems just kept coming to her and she decided to write them down and keep them this time. She found herself writing so many poems and decided that she would write 52 poems (she had turned 52 that May) and publish them before her 53rd birthday (May 2003). She had completed 53 poems by December, 2002. The delay was in the art work. She wanted to add 15 illustrations to the book for 15 of the poems. That did not work out and she was inspired to find scriptures that would go with the poems. She was able to find scriptures for the poems and added four more poems, for a total of 57 poems to be published. The poems have to do with life situations giving an inspirational message. With this being her first published work, she feels that it was God's will for these poems to be published before her novel.