UTSPS Poet of the Year 2010 Rosalyn Whitaker Ostler, born in Arizona, the first of six, spent a wonderful tomboy childhood in a tiny Missouri town, and has become a confirmed Utahn since age 13.  She met her husband Robert during neighborhood games of Kick-the-Can and free-for-all basketball in Nephi, Utah.  She graduated from high school there, and much later, studied briefly at the University of Utah, with a goal of an English degree.  She loved learning and the college atmosphere; but Real Life pulled her away.  For 52 years, Rose and Bob have lived in the Cottonwood Heights area of Salt Lake Valley.  They have seven wonderful children and a much-loved bunch of grands and greats.   Rosalyn had long desired to follow her father and her sister, Patricia, in writing poetry, before her first ‘real’ poem worked its way up to the light, in her late thirties.  She found Craft House writing classes, then the Utah State Poetry Society, and fell headlong into the passion of poetry.  Her writing has won local and national awards; publications include Panorama, Encore, Utah Sings, ByLine Magazine, Grandmother Earth, Rough Draft, Pennsylvania Prize Poems, Reach of Song, Extended Wings, Anthology of New England Writers, Touchstone, Junction, The Salt Lake Tribune.  She, Sue Ranglack, and Ned Snell co-authored By the Throat, which took second place in Writers’ Digest’s contest for self-published poetry books.  She also helped produce Nine One One, Poems for September 11.    Her experience includes giving workshops, contest judging, teaching poetry writing and also personal history.  Rosalyn has written several family biographies.   Rosalyn has been a featured reader at Thought Continuum and at City Art, also a presenter at Redrock Writers Seminar and at Heritage Writers Guild.   She is a past president of the Utah State Poetry Society and continues to serve as an officer.  Rosalyn is actively involved in church service, loving to teach teens and children, and treasures her many years as a Boy Scout leader.  She loves people, parties, reading, orange juice, music, gardening, bougainvillea, writing, blue skies, Los Barriles, dancing, jelly beans, and Disneyland. Judge’s comments: This year's first place winning manuscript, "Walking the Earth Barefoot," offers compelling evidence of a mind and spirit attuned to the moment-by-moment drama of our dealings with the natural environment. The drama is now gentle, now harsh; at once full of memory and expectation, the poems contemplate the mystery unfolding at the edge of awareness: The things I don't know are staring at me again... In the dawn, weeping birches stand like old men, white-bearded in the milky air, waiting for answers.          ("Christmas Fog") The tone is respectful, muted, devoted to what it sees and gleans.