I’ll be part of a Zoom poetry reading with a grand list of poets on Saturday, July 20 at 2pm MST. I hope you can join us. Details about how to register are at the bottom of the poster.
Poetry Reading Saturday
Category: Announcements
Interview & Review in Quill and Parchment
Gotta crow!!
Quill and Parchment has published a review of my collection Today and Other Seasons and an interview in their November issue. My thanks to editor Neil Leadbetter for this honor. Here are the links.
For the review: http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Nov2023/book3.html
For the interview: http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Nov2023/inten.html
Review in But Does It Rhyme
Sally Zakariya, Poetry Editor for Richer Resources Publications, has posted a lovely review of my book in their blog But Does It Rhyme. Thanks so much, Sally!
A Moving Journey
Sometimes you get the feeling you know a person you’ve never actually met. It’s like that with Sarah Russell. We “met” online some years ago, swapping poems and comments on Goodreads, and now that I’ve had a chance to read her moving collection I lost summer somewhere, I almost feel she’s been writing not just her life but mine. And other women’s too.
Published by Kelsay Books, Russell’s collection takes the reader on a deeply moving journey through childhood, marriage, motherhood, and on. Her often brief poems show a deft touch: “Our fights were a barrage of arrows / going to the softest places, / as if everything depended / on the outcome,” she says in “Early Marriage.” Just four short lines, but a volume of meaning.
Equally striking is her three-stanza “Choice,” which begins with the poet holding her daughter’s hand during what could only have been an abortion and ends, “ ‘The baby would be in college now,’ / she said to me the other day. / ‘I know,’ I said.”
A retired professor and editor, Russell has had a second life as an accomplished doll maker. In creating her dolls, she draws on her studies of myth and legend, imbuing her small sculptures (it seems almost a slight to call them merely “dolls”) with the same spirit and empathy she brings to her poetry.
Reflective, elegiac, powerful – the poems tell hard truths about hard topics like miscarriage, cancer, abortion, and divorce, and give gentle reminders of the soothing power of nature, the comfort of love. And the inevitable advance of age:
The novel in my head
has only time to be
a poem without last lines
to tell the reader
if she learned to love
the baby, if what the gypsy
said came true, if the letter
was from him.
So ends her poem “In my 70s.” And if the gypsy told Russell she would be a gifted poet, it did indeed come true.
My First Collection is published!
I’m thrilled to announce that my first collection I lost summer somewhere has just been published and is available at Amazon and through Kelsay Books.
Here are some of the great things my fellow poets have said about it.
“Melancholy, exuberance, nostalgia, fulfillment, contentment, longing – Sarah Russell hits all the spots, and there isn’t one poem where a woman won’t be able to identify in some way. She’s singing all our songs, putting into magical words things we felt so often but never knew how to tell. Deep sadness matched by laughter, gentleness, love and a sense of adventure. It was a privilege being there with her, living what she remembers, identifying with every line.”
Rose Mary Boehm, author of Tangents, From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden, and Peru Blues
*
“Sarah Russell brings us into her world, a world of “dream-filled summer nights,” where “leaves are October butterflies.” Russell’s poems sing the important moments of life. It’s a song that stays in your mind, drawing you back to the poems again and again.”
Nina Bennett, author of Mix Tape and The House of Yearning
*
“Sarah Russell’s poems don’t have to crawl under your skin – they’ve always been there. If you haven’t known a suicide, or gone through divorce or cancer, you’ve known the fear. If you’ve never had a love you’d marry twice if you had three lives, you’ve felt the longing. Russell may have lost summer somewhere, but she has found what makes us human.”
Alarie Tennille, author of Waking on the Moon and Running Counterclockwise
Pushcart!
Gotta crow! I’m over the moon. My poem “A Gospel of Birds” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Psaltery and Lyre. I posted it awhile back. Here’s the link.
Sarah Russell Poetry 