Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This segment features a poem by Karen Fullett-Christensen.
Fullett-Christensen has been writing poetry and memory stories since high school and credits two of her English teachers, Mr. Vespo and Mr. Brown, for their encouragement and support. She has self-published over 20 manuscripts. Her poems and creative non-fiction have appeared in a variety of print and online publications and are available at no cost to anyone who requests copies.
She was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago, in the Albany Park and Budlong Woods neighborhoods. She is a 1968 graduate of Mather High School and a 1972 graduate of Northern Illinois University. She briefly attended graduate school at Governors State University. She has resided in several of Chicago’s south and west suburbs and in Missoula, Montana.
Fullett-Christensen has held a variety of jobs as a secretary, a teacher, a real estate agent and an urban planner. She retired in 2012 after 13 years as the City of Aurora's downtown development director and manager of the neighborhood redevelopment division. She was recognized as the Kane County Planner of the Year.
In 1996, she received an Earth Champion award from The Missoulian newspaper and three years later was presented with an Individual Award of Excellence from the Will/South Cook Soil & Water Conservation District. Fullett-Christensen was inducted into the Ely Chapter of Lambda Alpha International, an honorary land economics society, in 2001.
Fullett-Christensen is an active community volunteer and a member of Books and Bread, the Aurora Jewish Renewal Congregation, Interfaith Aurora and Aurora Downtown. She also co-founded a local writers’ group in 2013 called A-Town Poetics.
Fullett-Christensen and her husband Larry are avid travelers and enjoy classes and adventures with the Lifelong Learning Institute and Road Scholar at Waubonsee Community College.
Music is of great importance to Fullett-Christensen. She is a board member of the Fox Valley Music Foundation and has sung with the Fox Valley Festival Chorus for over a decade.
Fullett-Christensen was Aurora’s first poet laureate. Here’s her poem “Moment of Clarity.”
Once in awhile the curtains part
the shadows lift
complexity resolves itself
to simple answers
what was foggy
now is clear
the lesson:
to immerse ourselves
in just one moment
let the future and the past
settle in their hidden places
undisturbed, unconsidered
let the clarity of now
be all we know
let it command complete attention
let it spread its gentle peace.
