A poet and visual artist, Bertha has published hundreds of poems in journals and anthologies, and in the interdisciplinary collection Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries; in the chapbooks The Fourth Beast, A House of Corners, and The Reason of Trees; and the full-length poetry collection Sleeper, You Wake. Her translation of Beowulf was published in 2000, and her translation of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems from the Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems Translated and Illuminated, will be published in 2010 by Birch Brook Press (New York). Her new poetry collection, Heart Turned Back, will be published in early 2010 by Salmon Poetry Publishing (Ireland). Her poem “Rhomboid” won PhiloPhonema’s Lyric Recovery Award in 2001, selected by Alfred Corn; and her poem “Truck Stand” was selected by John Ashbery for display in the Albany International Airport to celebrate the Millay Colony’s 30th anniversary. Bertha has won residency fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, the Millay Colony, Caldera, Jentel, Hawthorne International Writers Retreat, and Hedgebrook. She is Delaware County’s first Poet Laureate.

Bertha’s paintings, illuminations, and artist’s books have been shown in more than 200 juried and solo shows throughout the US and abroad, and she has received several New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Decentralization and New York Foundation for the Arts SOS grants for her interdisciplinary work, including a 2006 award for her solo exhibit “The Stones and Bones of Delaware County” and a 2008 award for her solo exhibit “Riddle Me This: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems Translated and Illuminated for Our Time and Place.” In 2002 she was awarded a Ludwig Vogelstein grant and in 2006 she was the recipient of an A.E. Ventures Grant. In 2007 the Association of Teaching Artists awarded her the Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award at the CommonGround conference in Rochester.

Bertha founded Bright Hill Press (BHP: www.brighthillpress.org) in Treadwell, New York, and serves as BHP program director, in partnership with NYSCA, for the New York State Literary Web Site and Literary Map, www.nyslittree.org.

She has been a teaching artist since the 1970s. Besides working with Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Bertha teaches through the DCMO/ONC BOCES Arts in Education programs and with arts organizations in upstate New York, and she is a CROP artist. She has been a poet-in-residence at Hartwick College, State University of New York. Potsdam, NCCC, and Wells College, and has taught creative writing at Hartwick.