Sheryl St. Germain is Delta Poetry Review’s featured writer

Autumn House is excited to share that Delta Poetry Review has chosen Sheryl St. Germain as their featured writer!

Included in this feature are three poems from The Small Door of Your Death and one poem from Fifty Miles (Etruscan Press), an insightful interview with Sheryl conducted by Dixon Hearne, and a book review of The Small Door of Your Death. 

In her interview with Delta Poetry Review, Sheryl discusses how growing up in Louisiana has influenced her writing, her attraction to lyricism, and how themes of loss, addiction, and hope are braided into her work. Here’s a small excerpt:

 Writing—especially poetry writing—helps me to lay things out in all their complexity. Here is the thing in all its horror and ambiguity, and maybe there is a small insight that comes out of that. It helps me to imagine other sides of a story, imagine what might have been, honor grief and darkness. I think tragedy drives many artists, not just poets, to work. While they are working, they are alive.

Former Poet Laureate of Louisianna Darrell Bourque takes us through The Small Door of Your Death and describes what makes Sheryl’s work both elegant and “powerfully triggering.”

The Small Door of Your Death is so much more than we come to expect from a book of poems. It is tractate, disquisition, song, symphony. It is consolation and philosophy. It is grief materialized right before our eyes, personal grief and grief that grips communities and nations. It is ache. Loss. History. Dream. It is also Hope and Solace, and how memory stands with us at our most destitute times, how love finally, and love only, saves us.

We’re grateful to Delta Poetry Review for this beautiful deep dive with Sheryl St. Germain! Read Sheryl’s featured poems here. Delta Poetry Review’s interview with Sheryl and book review of The Small Door of Your Death are available here.