Sara Backer's Blog

My small sonnet For Tinker Bell appears in the Muddy River Review.  You could spent all day on this web site of archived poems!

SurVision #11 has published my ecologic-science fiction poem Pollen. Be careful when you sneeze.

White Enso an online journal of Japan related writing published three of my poems:

"Breath" -- one of many ways to breath in chaos and breath out steadiness

"I Live without Heat" --set in my former apartment in Japan, the difficulty of being a foreigner

"Tsuyu" (rain season) -- about learning kanji

 Poetry Northwest was the first renowned journal that accepted one of my poems. I'm very happy to have a second poem in PN years later.  "Freight" may be a difficult poem to read due to its content of abuse but it also shows a path of working through damage. Poetry Northwest is a print journal but poems from its issues can be found online at https://www.poetrynw.org.

Paul Cezanne's The Stove in the Studio made me think about the process of art and writing. Read This Sooty Darkness on the site of The Lake.

 More of my poems will be published in 2022. Watch for:

Poetry Northwest, Muddy River Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Comstock Review, Penumbric, Wood Cat, Vincent Brothers Review

 Oh, yes, this is true. I can't get enough of snowscapes in the impressionist tradition.  My poem, "My Addiction to Impressionist Snowscapes" appeared only in print in Lake Effect (v26/Spring 2022).

 I am pleased and honored to have continuous support from Turtle Island Quarterly for my environmental poetry.  "As I Turn Off the Light" is about moths and moonlight and our sad future. (TIQ #22, 2022)

 My right foot leads with literary poetry, but my left foot follows with speculative poetry. I rarely write from prompts, but I couldn't resist a call for ekphrastic piece that does not exist and is also speculative. I was thrilled to place it in Eye to the Telescope. (Issue #44, April 2022)

 "Grudge Day" is a fun prose poem with a surreal twist. Published in Coastal Shelf (Spring 2022).