Sumter County Middle School teacher and author Pamela Harvey gave an interview on Sept. 21st on her book of poetry, In Times of Trouble, Stop and Pray. She described the inspiration for the volume while seated on a chair covered with images of books.
“The book was inspired spiritually. I was visited through the night, and just started downloading these poems into me, and I hear in the spirit ‘book.’ I was like ‘Okay, so you want me to put these in a book?”
Harvey considers her writing to be a natural outpouring of the way she interacts with others.
“I’m always speaking to people with spiritual encouragement anyways, so this was just an addition to what I already do every day to somebody, give them uplifting words when they are down or just need to hear something positive.”
Harvey pauses mid-interview, returning a passing student’s greeting.
“So that was my inspiration, to be able to bless people, just as I was getting those poems I was blessed and wanted to share it with the world.”
Harvey also talked about how the cover was inspired.
“If you take a look at that cover, that cover is an actual picture that I took with my phone camera. I have this spiritual thing going on with clouds and nature, and so I’m always stopping and taking pictures. This particular night I was going to the local Dollar General right up the street from me and my focus was the clouds, and thinking to myself, ‘Wow, this is so beautiful.’
I said okay God, give me the title. So the title was given to me, and I said ‘Okay, what do I do about a cover?’ and I hear the word ‘Clouds.’ I instantly remember all those clouds pictures I had taken in my phone and that was it, because it had the stop sign there. So that was very significant for local readers to know that there is beauty, although sometimes we are experiencing some negative things here in our small town, there are some very beautiful and positive things that are here, if you’ll take time to watch, to look for them, they are here.”
She talked about the process by which she writes poems.
“Some of them just truly came to me. I have a gift of wording anyways, and so the ability to cause things to rhyme is a gift that I have. So, as they were given to me, of course, the rhyme, the rhythm came together.”
She talked about the audience for one of the poems.
“One particular poem is called A Young Encounter. The hope with that one is to be able to reach younger people to let them know that it is more than okay to have a relationship with a higher power and not be so driven and influenced by the follows and social media and all these platforms. It’s okay to pick up the Bible and read it.”
Harvey also described other callings outside of teaching and writing.
“I’m a licensed minister, and I’ll be ordained next month.”
She talked about where readers could find her book.
“It’s available on Amazon. Word of mouth, right now, has gotten more sales than Amazon has. I would probably say a hundred copies, and I just released it August 23rd.”