“It's my book! It's my book! This is my first book!” That was the greeting the UPS man received when he delivered the two big boxes to Terri Ford's apartment in the end of April.

        Publication had never been a top priority for Miss Ford, who says she has been writing for about 20 years. But some of the other poets she knew were starting to get published, and she decided to start sending out her manuscript to contests.

        She had worked on the manuscript for about seven years but more intensely for the last three or four, whittling down the poems that originally covered too broad a time span.

        In September 1999, Miss Ford found out Four Way Books in New York would publish her first book of poetry, Why the Ships are She.

        “These poems really invite the reader in,” says Martha Rhodes, director of Four Way Books. “They don't say, "I am smarter than you, and you are never going to understand.”'

        Elizabeth Logan Harris, a friend of Miss Ford, agrees about the accessibility of her friend's work.

        “When I read her poems, they carry me away,” Ms. Harris says. “They're mighty smart, but they're not inaccessible.

        “They're just full of heart as well as humor and wit. I think Terri has one of the greatest wits that I know.”

        That the publication of her first book was not too far off was something that Miss Ford knew.

        “Not to be corny or cosmic, but I knew it was going to happen,” says the graduate of the master of fine arts program at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C. “Things were just starting to happen for me in my life of poetry. I knew it was coming. Instinct, I guess.

        “It's sort of like when people say, "I met this guy, and I'm going to marry him.' I just knew.”

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