Singer-songwriter Cosy Sheridan of Harrisville spoke and performed for the Monadnock Writers’ Group Saturday in honor of National Poetry Month.

After talking about her songwriting process, Sheridan led the group in a free writing exercise, followed by participants sharing their writing.

“Songwriting and poetry are a little different because of the way people experience them. When you’re reading a poem, you can always page back and reread it, but when you’re listening to a song, you have to keep going,” Sheridan said. “The songwriter’s job is to hold your attention for the entire song.” 

Sheridan has been well-known on the national folk music scene since 1992, when she won the Kerrville Folk Festival's New Song Award,  The Telluride Bluegrass Festival Troubadour Contest and the Falcon Ridge Songwriting Contest. The same year, she released the album “Quietly Led” on Waterbug Records.

In the three decades since, Sheridan has released more than 13 albums, including “The Horse King, ” “Sometimes I Feel Too Much” and  “Eros.” Sheridan has also written a one-woman-show, and her songs appeared in author Robert Fulghum’s multimedia novel “Third Wish.”

Sheridan is also founder of the Moab Folk Camp songwriters retreat, where she has taught songwriting for 30 years.

“I don’t teach the type of songwriting they might teach to freshman at a music school. I don’t try to teach people to write big hits that are going to make them a lot of money. I’m not going for the universality,” Sheridan said. “I teach to people who have a vocation for songwriting; they do it because they love it and because they feel a need to. My writing is personal.” 

Sheridan shared several songs which tell stories from her life,  including “Skip the Cat Needs a Home.” The chorus shares the plight of Skip, “a three-legged cat in a four-legged world.” 

“I wrote this song to try to convince some of my neighbors back in Utah to take in a cat I had to leave behind, because she refused to ride in a cat carrier,” Sheridan said. “After I sent the video to my neighbors, three people offered to take her in.” 

Sheridan explained that while the structure of songwriting overlaps with poetry, including using use of repetition and rhyming, “the purpose of songwriting is to make people feel.”

“I’m not a poet, but I know poetry makes you think, and there is a point in poetry when it gets the point across – this is the point of this poem, this is why this writer wrote this poem. But if I’m singing a song and people start thinking about what the song means, then I’ve lost them,” Sheridan said. “The songwriter’s job is to make people feel, and sometimes, of course, to make them sing.” 

Sheridan performed another song, “Land of 10,000 Mothers,” which she wrote after seeing mothers say goodbye to their sons during the Iraq War.

“I wrote this at a time in my life when I was traveling a lot and spending a lot of time in airports, and it was a time when thousands of young people were going off to war,” Sheridan recalled. “Songwriting brings you to your emotional center. Most people don’t get to go there with their work, but as a songwriter, I get to do that all day.”

Sheridan and her husband, bass player Charley Koch, perform every Tuesday morning on YouTube at youtube.com/channel/UCEKO7FbtLAC5QiYK6XqfoTw.  Sheridan’s new album with Koch, “A Beautiful Sound,”  is available on iTunes.