Sandy Carlson, poet laureate of Woodbury, Conn., talks nature poetry with Tom Nicotera and Sherri Bedingfield.

Sheryll (Sherri) Bedingfield is a family therapist, psychotherapist, and a counselor with the Youth & Family Resource Center. She is the proud mother of two sons and twin grandsons. She has two poetry collections, Transitions & Transformations (Antrim House, 2010) and The Clattering, Voices from Old Forfarshire, Scotland (Grayson). Read more about Sherri here.

Tom Nicotera has taught poetry classes and workshops in Washington, D.C., and in Maryland. In Connecticut, Tom ran a poetry series at Susan's Cafe in Granby, and for 25 years was involved as cofounder/coordinator of the Bloomfield Library's Wintonbury Poetry Series. He was editor of Charter Oak Poets II, an anthology of Hartford area poets, and was on the organizing committee for the 2001 Connecticut Poetry Festival at Middlesex Community College. For several years, he was a mentor for the student poetry collaboration between the American School for the Deaf and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. He has a book of poems titled What Better Place To Be Than Here? , and he has published poems in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. “Nathan Hall State Forest” previously appeared in Woodlands, the magazine of the Connecticut Forest and Parks Association.