Tom Odegard

Tom Odegard (aka Tom/Ms.G) arrived in the Bay Area from Portland when he was eight, in 1948. When he was 12 he set about writing a science book but soon discovered that he only knew enough to write the introduction at
which point he switched to poetry. Since then he’s lived in many places in multiple states of mind, and written too many pages of words some of which he’s read at venues around the Bay or put into chapbooks.
He’s published two books: Friends Well Met; a collection of poems – and Past Lives Led; a poetic memoir both from Beatitude Press in Berkeley.

He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections
including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools.
In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a Two Spirit, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, Yikes!