Author Spotlight: Chris Month

Poet Chris Month’s life began in the godforsaken land of Poland, where, as a Jewish child, she was separated from her parents in an effort to keep her alive. Her family mostly perished in the Holocaust, but Chris, her mother, and her father were hidden in separate attics for over three years and miraculously escaped the menacing Gestapo until liberated by allied forces in 1945. Although Month was not traumatized in any obvious way, her memory of that time is of a child excessively starved for attention. To gain the love and admiration of her parents, she drew pictures. She dressed up in her mother’s skirts and high heels and put on plays. She was an actress, singer, dancer, and clown—but always an observer, studying her parents’ faces for signs of approval. Then, one day, she wrote a poem, winning her father’s respect, and so began her love of words. In My Life of Rhyme, the muse appears, and inspiration awakens. In a magical moment, words come rushing out—words that rhyme and words that reason. A poem is born, and over the years, they pile up into tens, then hundreds, approaching a thousand. In this collection are Month’s thoughts and imaginings, her observations and reflections, always colored by wit and irony and touched by a childhood that almost never was.