Heidi Ehle’s debut poetry collection, What We Know, is now available for purchase. at Makers Market in Jonesborough and Mr K’s in Johnson City as well as via direct purchase. Learn more.

About What We Know

What We Know is not only a collection featuring Heidi’s poetry. The collaborative effort also features cover art and illustrations by her husband, Charles Jones.

What We Know is now available at Makers Market in Jonesborough and Mr K’s in Johnson City as well as via direct purchase. Learn more.

About the Author

In Heidi Ehle’s family, writing is in the air. Her mother wrote poetry, and she remembers her reciting all of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Renascence from memory at the slightest provocation. Her niece is a published poet and novelist. It has always felt natural that writing would be part of her life.

​Heidi is also naturally inquisitive. She writes because she is perpetually interested in the dynamic relationship of content to form, because she feels that she has something to say, because it helps her see the world in a different more alert way, because she likes the company of writers, and because it is a creative outlet that she can continue to pursue until she is 92 – unlike music and dance.

Heidi’s background in dance (an aspiring professional until age 24), and music (a degree in Classical Flute Performance and 35 years as a performer and teacher) create a context for poetry, which – after all – was originally a live performance oral tradition.

She began writing with some focus in 1998 after a back injury laid her low and she needed a creative outlet she could pursue in a prone position. She has written continually since then, more or less, and other than the occasional workshop, writers retreat or class she is largely self-educated in this arena. She has focused on her writing with fresh energy since retirement three years ago from her position as Assistant Director of the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). She has delved more deeply into a study of craft and form, joined a writer’s group, developed a relationship with a mentor figure, and taken some advanced writing classes from Jesse Graves (Poet in Residence at ETSU).

​As someone with a background in the performing arts, she has been increasingly interested in how poetry is delivered. Inspired by many a droning poetry reading, Heidi has been developing her ability to memorize ‘suites’ of her poetry, leaning toward a more theatrical presentation, and even incorporating some movement. She performs in a musical duo called the Sweetwater Troubadours, and the troubadour legacy gives a model for this combination of music/ movement and language.