The subjects of Mary French’s poem sat in front of her.
A teacup holding golden tea, a matching saucer, a spoon — all reminders of Lucy, a woman French once knew, who had her own silver teaspoons and blue willow teacups.
“I don’t know where it’s going yet,” French said of the poem. “I’m having fun.”
Though French, of Pittsfield, has lost much of her mobility and hearing, she insists she is as sharp as ever. Sharp enough that, at 93 years old, she has just self-published her first ever collection of poems, “A Remembering”.
The collection of almost 70 poems details French’s childhood through the Great Depression, the Polio Epidemic and World War II. In writing each one, she places herself in the shoes of the people around her, imagining the sacrifices her grandmother made to ensure her daughter owned a home during the depression, her family’s quarantine when her older sister caught Polio and the censored letters her uncle sent her mother from across the ocean.
When she was younger, she “didn’t really think of poetry writing. I wrote. If I wrote a letter, it was a novel.” It wasn’t until her late husband, Jack French, bought her a computer that she started to write poems. She was 50 years old.
“It just made manipulating words easier, so I took advantage of it,” she laughed, “and I think it made me realize that I had a story to tell.”
Having grown up in Winchester, Mass., French moved to New Hampshire in seventh grade, when her father got a job working with the railroad in Dover. After graduating high school, she moved to York Beach, Maine, where she worked as a laundress and met her future husband.
The two would go on to have eight children. French now has over 40 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren combined.
Her small house is covered in art. Paintings and children’s drawings cover the walls, and sculptures are scattered throughout. Plants drape over windowsills, and a lifetime of trinkets and knick-knacks sit on every surface.
While French no longer paints, many of the pieces on the walls are her own work.
“I’ve had two operations that have kind of slowed me down,” she said, “but I’m still here.”
French isn’t alone. Castelli, her friend and a fellow poet, sits with her on the porch, repeating questions and offering details French didn’t think to mention. The two met through the Percheron Poets, an evolution of the Yogurt Poets group that French helped found in Concord.
The friendship was immediate, as soon as the two sat next to each other at a meeting. Castelli praised French’s work, as well as her ability to help others in improving their own.
French’s feedback was always “right to the point,” Castelli said, and she had a unique ability to be supportive while still offering constructive criticism.
In addition to her work as an artist and writer, French has been heavily involved in the communities she has lived in. Describing herself as “very bossy,” she has housed kindergartens in her own home until her local school offered the program, and she fought against the proposed shuttering of a school in Hopkinton.
In turn, her community has supported her, particularly in the publishing of her work. The Percheron Poets put together the collection and reached out to a publisher, and Castelli’s husband, Gary Castelli, edited the cover.
The image on the cover is a picture French herself took. Her father is just out of frame.
“I’m happy. I think that’s important, too, is not to dwell on, ‘Oh, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.’ Because there’s so many things you can do. That I think you need to do them,” French said.
