What is Poetry School?

Poetry School is a newsletter about books, writing, wonder, trees, and, of course, poetry.

What you’ll find here: book reviews (all genres! with a little extra love for queer lit and poetry), longform essays, reflections on my journey as an undergraduate student in my 40s (spoiler: it is the best thing ever), deep(ish) dives into art history, collections of things I love, occasional booklists, lots of pictures of nature and my beloved pup, offerings of care, and, always—exuberance, wonder, earnestness.

Poetry School grew out of Books & Bakes, which I began in 2021 as a way to write about queer lit and home baking. I still love queer lit, and I still love baking, but the tenor of the newsletter has changed a lot in the four years I’ve been writing it. Poetry School captures the essence of what this newsletter is about—paying attention, staying open to wonder, interrogating and celebrating language, moving through the world with curiosity and care, and honoring complexity.

Poetry is how I think and feel. School (expansively!), is where I go to untangle all those thoughts and feelings. I hope you’ll spend some time tangling and untangling in poetry school with me.

About the Writer

Laura Sackton is a queer poet who lives and writes in rural Massachusetts. She’s known around the internet as an evangelist for earnestness.

“We Are Profoundly Made of Each Other”

Ever since I heard Ross Gay speak these words in the audiobook Wild & Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver, they have become a kind of second heartbeat inside my chest. Does this happen to you, this making-of-space inside your skin for the words of others? It happened again more recently, on the Between the Covers podcast, when David Naimon used the phrase “citational gestures of love” to describe an aspect of Bluff by Danez Smith.

The other day I told a friend that “citational gestures of love” is a pretty good description of my poetics. “We are profoundly made of each other” is another. I do not write alone. I do not think alone. My ideas are not mine alone. Why would I want pretend otherwise? What a lonely way to live. So, in this “About” section, I include some of the people and writing and places and ideas that inspire, challenge, delight, and hold me—in other words, what makes me, and thus, makes this newsletter. In still more words: here is a small and incomplete list of some things I love!

• Between the Covers (podcast of my heart)

• Can We Read? (the newsletter that made me fall in love with picture books)

• Charlott Schönwetter’s writing (newsletter! bookstagram! a blog!)

• Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice (“I'm here to help us all be better. Like Mary Poppins, but Black & Queer.”)

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

• Metonymy Press (gay press of my heart)

• Rosamond Reads (newsletter of gay tenderness)

• Surabhi Reading Writing Teaching (a newsletter, but also, of course, her bookstagram)

• The Stacks Podcast (my first podcast love)

There are so many trees and bodies of water and non-human creatures and wild places and flowers and kinds of weather without whom I would be lost. Here are the ones that hold me and inspire me the most. In other words, I co-write this newsletter with these beings.

Ashfield Lake

The Sugar Maple on the Ridge

The Atlantic Ocean

My Pup