Community Building through Words and Webwork
Sharon Berg has a major focus on community building, whether it is in her daily work as an Elementary School Teacher, her Graduate Research about educational goals in the First Nations community, or her interest in creating Big Pond Rumour as a space where writers from across the globe can communicate and share their common interests. Perhaps this focus on community evolves out of her long experience with Phoenix: A Poet's Workshop, in Toronto. The workshop members believed that 'voice' was so important to the delivery of the poem they founded The Axle Tree Coffee House, which itself became one of the longest running literary performance venues in Canada.
Sharon published her poetry in countless print periodicals across Canada, in the U.K., the USA, the Netherlands and Australia during the 1970s and 1980s. She also released several books and audio tapes, and wrote book reviews for both Poetry Canada Review and event magazine. Yet, her writing went into a long hiatus as her focus turned toward academia. She collected her B.A. in Native Studies (1991, Laurentian); a B.Ed (1992, U of T) as well as a Certificate in Magazine Publication (1995, Ryerson). She followed with an M.Ed (1998, York) and finished her D. Ed. courses with Honours (2000, UBC) before encountering a stonewalling in the search for a supervisor of her D.Ed Thesis. It was then that she turned her attention to teaching in the public schools system rather than continuing in the university setting. She plans to continue her Doctoral research at a later date but is, in the meantime, focused on reworking her M.Ed Thesis on Wandering Spirit Survival School as a volume of narrative history.
However, the writer cannot be suppressed. Sharon turned her attention back to her own writing and began writing poetry book reviews again, this time for Eric Barstad's website, poetryreview.ca. In 2006, she founded Big Pond Rumour, a multifunctional domain. http://www.big-pond-rumour.com/ There is The Press area (focusing on Canadian poetry only) and The Zine area (an international periodical featuring poetry, fiction and essay that is released twice a year, both online and a small print run). Big Pond Rumour also an online Members Pool of international authors.
As an Elementary School Teacher, Sharon was proud to receive an Award of Distinction in 2006. It is important to know she was nominated by her teaching colleagues. They told her she had received it for her tireless work to promote literacy among students, not only in her own classroom, but throughout the entire school.
In 2009, Sharon is focused on the writing of short stories while finalizing her third book manuscript of poetry. Yet her interest in word stretches beyond the page. She also created a short poem video for youtube.
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