Sydney Lea

A former Pulitzer finalist in poetry, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015.  In 2021, he was presented with his home state’s highest distinction of its kind, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published twenty-four books: two novels, six volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and sixteen poetry collections, most recently What Shines (2023) His latest book of personal essays is Such Dancing as We Can (2024). His second novel, Now Look, was published last month.

 

  • Sydney Lea: ROBERT FROST AND THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

    In his classic book on nature and art titled Memory and Landscape, Simon Schama examines "the connection between nature and symbolism", claiming that "memory is the landscape on which we write our recurrent obsessions".
    Plume Issue #160 December 2024

  • Sicily, 1992

    Etna’s lava shone against the gloom,

  • Seven Slovene Poets introduced by Sydney Lea

    For reasons there’s no need to explore, I have had a long literary and personal attachment to Slovenia

  • About Mending Walls…Sort of, by Sydney Lea

    The COVID-19 scourge has moved a horde of people to my home state,
    Issue #128 April 2022

  • Alone at 77 & I Arrive at the Scene

    Unhungry, he cracks a single egg.

  • Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea

    Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems by Sydney Lea   The editor of an online journal recently asked 25…

    Issue #108 August 2020

  • A Brief Portfolio: Five Poems

    I found this suitcase slumped in a dark attic corner

  • The Big Blow

    After the snow-soused April gale I wandered

  • Walking into Metaphor

    A few weeks back, while snow persisted, no matter it was April, I headed into the woods, in part
    Issue #95 July 2019

  • But-cept

    I recall not wanting my oldest son

  • Photographs, 1949 | Retiree

    In one, they pose, grinning straight at the Kodak,

  • Of Course

    If I wake at 3, ephemerality

  • OLD HUSBAND’S TALES

    I’m one who tells old husbands’ tales, not wives’,

  • Annie Fitch’s Duck Sauce

    I must be prepared to sit

  • Abbatoir Time

    The widower pushed the tailgate shut and fell.