For Sue Silvermarie, a writer and self-defined gypsy who buzzed around the world to places like Boston and Brazil, Milwaukee is her inner-bee's favorite flower.

"I consider Milwaukee home," says Silvermarie. "It's where an extended family helped me raise my son and where I came out as a writer and as a lesbian-feminist in the early '70s."

Silvermarie's list of published work runs almost three pages long, with highlights such as "RAWA" (Radical Association of Women of Afghanistan),"Rosebud" and "Womanspirit." She has been included in more than a dozen anthologies, the prestigious "We'Moon Calendar" and self-published numerous chapbooks including 1985's "Imagine Her Satisfaction," which opens with a touching collection of well-crafted confessional poems about being a single mother.

"Now you come close/to hand me a dandelion/with careful consideration/leaving your (toy) gun in the grass/As you run off and the bright gift withers/I fear the years ahead/beating you down/from whole to half of what you are."

In 1996, Silvermarie published "Tales From My Teachers on the Alzheimer's Unit," a collection of 36 narrative poems exploring the human spirit when trammeled with dementia. Later, she released "Guatemala is a Poem," chronicling her experiences as a human rights monitor in a Mayan refugee village in Guatemala.

Although her son David is now 34 and lives in New York City, Silvermarie, a certified poetry therapist, continues to focus her energy on children. She currently works at LifeWay's Children's Center in Riverwest and writes fiction and nonfiction for children's magazines. She also wrote numerous picture books -- and a novel -- for youngsters.

"This makes a satisfying full circle, since my beginnings as a poet came when I was a struggling single mother," she says.