Sydney Lea's Blog

I have been pretty unproductive for some time now. This has partly to do with the arrival of grandchild number 6, with whom --as with the others-- I am besotted. Happily he, like the others, lives within an easy drive.

I also seem to go into lulls shortly after the publication of books, and my twelfth collection, No Doubt the Nameless, was published last month. I suppose a psychologist could make something of that tendency to lapse after a book shows up, but it's not really something that espe...

Vermont Public Television has produced a video of a recent talk I gave at the excellent Norwich (VT) Bookstore.

If you are interested, go to http://vermontpbs.org/show/21872/105

If anyone should be interested, Burlington, Vermont-based author and radio host Shelagh Shapiro interviewed me on her show, Write the Book. She is a sharp mind indeed. As for me, I'm not the one to judge.

http://writethebook.podbean.com/e/sydney-lea-interview-388-22216/

I seem to be posting pretty sporadically, as I assumed I might once I ended my term as poet laureate. I am not idle, though. My excellent successor s Vermont state poet, Chard deNiord, and I are working on an anthology of Vermont poets, ouyr little state having the most such citizens per capita of any in the nation.

I also recently published my book of mini-essays, "What's the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long," available from Green Writers Press. And on the 1st of this month, my twelfth...

Vermont's new maverick publisher, Green Writers Press, has released my collection of mini-essays (the longest in the book is four pages, most about the length of the two that follow here).

Some of these pieces began as "translations" into prose of certain older poems that had never found their rhythms. I had an intuition –whether accurate or not is for others to judge– that those poems would do better if presented in the more supple format of prose.

Whatever the case, if these attract you, go t...

Having lately been succeeded as my state's Poet Laureate by the excellent Chard de Niord, I am posting far less regularly here than once. But I will keep at it now and then for those who may be intrerested.

I'd like to comment first on the inauguration of David Rees Evans as the president of Southern Vermont College in Bennington. I had not known this impressive man prior to the ceremony last Friday, so was particularly honored that he asked me to read the title poem of my last collections, "I...

                                                      As it happens, my passing the torch as Vermont Poet Laureate to the gifted Chard deNiord is contemporaneous with the celebration of the VAC's existence for half a century. I will read the follo...

 On November 12, I will launch my new book of essays, What's the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long, with a reading at the Phoenix Book Store in Burlington, Vermont.

The book is nothing if not eccentric, in that it consists of about seventy essays, the longest of which is four pages. Others, like the one below, tend to be in the one- or two-page category. If there is a binding concern in the collection it is this: to what degree does my version of "reality" conform to some other puta...

People have often asked me, of course, why I chose poetry as my principal vocation. I like to joke that it's all about money, women, and fame...which is, of course, just that: a joke. The best-selling poets in America would do well to attract more readers than a last-place major league baseball team might draw in late September of a hopeless season. 

So there have to be other motives. I could go on at length about these, but I'll try to distill my thoughts here.


I came to poetry late, no...

I have a new book of personal essays, which will be launched on November 9 at the Phoenix Bookstore in Burlington, Vermont. It is more than a little eccentric, consisting of more than sixty short-short pieces, the longest of which runs to four pages, most running one or two. It is called What's the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long, and will be published by Vermont's own excellent new house, Green Writers Press (not that there is anything particularly "green" sbout this volume).

My excel...