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Meet Sara Burant, 2023 Oregon Literary Fellow

We’re thrilled to introduce the 2023 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients with individual features on our blog! Out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating the 500+ applications we received, and selected 13 writers and two publishers to receive grants of $3,500 each.  Literary Arts also awarded two Oregon Literary Career Fellowships of $10,000 each. Applications for the 2024 Literary Fellowships will open in June 2023.

Sara Burant’s poems and reviews have appeared in Spillway, Ruminate, Pedestal, Spry and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She’s the author of the chapbook Verge. She received an MFA in Poetry from St. Mary’s College of California. In 2019, she was awarded  a residency at Playa. She lives in Eugene where she takes care of other people’s pets and gardens. Sara is the 2023 recipient of the Walt Morey Fellowship in Poetry.

Q&A with Literary Arts

Who are some writers you look up to or who move you to write? 
Maxine Scates has been a role model for me since I first met her in 2003. She showed me how it’s possible to inhabit a house of poetry, or as Emily Dickinson put it to dwell in Possibility–. Likewise, Brenda Hillman and Matthew Zapruder with whom I worked when I was their student at St. Mary’s. But I often find it’s the work of my poet-friends & peers—Dan Alter, Ross Belot, and Eugene poets Kelly Terwilliger, Cecelia Hagen, Anita Sullivan and others—that moves me most to write. And the work of poets & writers I discover online or in print journals “by accident,” exquisite work by people who probably won’t become “famous” or widely read but who nonetheless do the work & do it beautifully, with passion & understanding, keen ears & open hearts. 

What are your sources of inspiration? Of joy?
Lately, I’m inspired by visits to the laundromat and walks in my somewhat urban, somewhat gritty part of town; I’m inspired by reading and often will use a line from someone else’s poem to generate work. Once I was advised not to write about what I see out my window, but contrary to that advice I often begin with what’s happening on my street, or in my landlady’s yard. Sources of joy? Oh that would be things like eating cheesecake with my grandchildren, sitting with my dog, a perfect cup of coffee or tea, the sun on my face, spotting Western Bluebirds in Amazon Park, spending time with my sweetie who lives far away, or when the writing is going well.


How would you describe your creative process?
In a word, messy. Sometimes random & disorganized, with many notes & handwritten rafts I have trouble keeping track of. Occasionally the process is clean, a piece finding clarity & voice in just three or four drafts. Then, wow! I’m just grateful. 

What is most exciting about receiving a fellowship?
Letting go of the work and having it recognized. Having disinterested people put their faith in it. And of course the surge of creativity, of inspiration, that has followed.


What are you currently working on?
I have two projects. I’m collaborating with Canadian poet Ross Belot on a translation of the French surrealist Paul Éluard’s 1932 collection La vie immédiate. And I’m collecting my own work for a–fingers-crossed–eventual manuscript. 

What has kept you writing?
For various reasons, I’ve tried to give up or stop writing, but I’ve always come back. Why? Maybe it’s because I write to discover not what I know but what I don’t know; I write to discover connections, to defamiliarize my world, to make it new to me. This process can pull me out of some pretty dark or uncomfortable places in myself, so I turn again & again to the page.

“I write to discover connections, to defamiliarize my world, to make it new to me.”

What advice do you have for future applicants?
A few years ago, the poet Jennifer Perrine advised applicants to be persistent. I took her advice, and though I shy away from giving advice, persistence seems like a pretty good strategy. That, and making a no-matter-what kind of commitment to the practice of writing. 


Any book (or movie, album, show, etc.) recommendations?

  • Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novel
  • Laura Jensen’s Bad Boatspoetry collection, 1977
  • Maxine Scates’ My Wilderness, poetry
  • Dan Alter’s My Little Book of Exiles, poetry 
  • Mahmoud Darwish’s Selected Poems titled Unfortunately, It Was Paradise
  • Spencer Reese’s The Road to Emmauspoetry
  • The Rules of the Game1939 film directed by Jean Renoir
  • Twelve Angry Men, the original 1957 film 

Feral Pigeons Over The Empty Ballfields

Can i say they were of water
& light gathered
up & let go
gathered & let go
can i say they had water’s patina
a river’s
eddies in the sky
instead of rain they opened
windows
i heard wheels
steam-vents & winnowing
clapping & a crowd i heard
running i heard horses
can i say they were horses
can i say they were the manes of horses
unmaking & remaking
themselves
restless variations on a theme allegro ma
non troppo an unfinished
unfinishable movement
a face rearranging itself as light
& shadow
shadow & light a note
left by someone
who never comes back
the same house
that can’t be the same house
can i say they entered me as if i were that

Judge’s Comments

“Rich in image and feeling, Sarah Burant’s poems are reminders that this world is terrifically alive. No subject is overlooked—a sense of careful attention and wonder extends to mole crabs, lindens, glaciers. This is a lush landscape where borders collapse: the natural world permeates interiority, “sorrow sprouts white feathers,” memories flood into the present moment, an owl might glide into bed, and sky catches in one’s throat. Our world is intricately connected, and Burant shows us the skein. Musical, observant, and full of life, Burant’s poetry speaks to the wildness around and inside us, inviting us to appreciate “these honeyed days.” – Natasha Rao

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