by Phyllis Katz
“Do” Roberts, poet and founder of Bloodroot Literary Magazine, 1930-2014, died suddenly on February 23, 2014. Born in Georgia, she moved to New York City with a school friend after high-school. There she met her husband, Kenneth Glaser, and they moved to Stamford, CT where they raised two sons, Gregg and Kirk. In 1977 her husband died; one of her sons noted that losing him was “the source of much of her poetry.”
When her boys reached high-school age, “Do” pursued her long-time goal of a college education, receiving a B.A. in Theater from the University of Bridgeport and an MFA in poetry from Goddard College in the late 1990’s. When her son Kirk attended Dartmouth College, “Do” came to the Upper Valley frequently, bought a house in Thetford Center in 1988, and became a member of a writer’s group at Hanover’s Howe Library. Out of numerous conversations about the need for a literary magazine in the Upper Valley, and with the aid of a fellow writer Deloris Netzband, Bloodroot was born in 2008. An annual publication, its last issue came out in 2014, by which time the magazine had attracted submissions from writers far beyond the Upper Valley. In her obituary, Valley News reporter Alex Hanson notes that “the journal and the [five or six local] annual readings over which Roberts presided with a quiet, distinctly Southern grace and charm, created a sense of community for Upper Valley creative writers that hadn’t existed before.” We are honored to have the opportunity to continue in “Do” footsteps in this revival of Bloodroot.
