Sarah Fairchild's Poetry

To  read samples of Sarah's poetry, select individual poems from the Poetry v drop-down menu under the v Sarah Fairchild sub-menu.

Sarah, unlike myself,  had a formal education in creative writing focused on poetry; she was published in many places: (see Sarah Fairchild at Nebraska Authors— which contains 2 links to videos of Sarah reading, among other things,  some of her poetry). 

I, her husband as "editor" on this website, would hope that after reading through all these poems and their notes, you would come to know Sarah very well. For example, read the section Romance, including her poem Vision, including its notes, which links to my poem I Drēmpte which, when read all the way through with its notes, will explain a lot, about why I placed Vision after Tip The World Over (her death poem).  

Some of the poems, and increasingly more in the future, will be "published" here posthumously, without her consultation or approval, so I cannot always tell if or how much she might have changed them to complete them to her satisfaction. I really would much rather have her here to help with this, but as it stands, I can only act out of my ignorance. I try to date all our poems as best I can. Usually the date is simply my best guess. 

Sarah died on October 30, 2017 at 11:41 PM, so the further before that a poem is dated, the more likely it is to be a version that would have met with her approval ... others might have only been first or early drafts, or just potentialities, never even partially realized. In some ways, such unrealized potentialities are a inestimable value, because they come from a place deeper in the subconscious mind than do more polished works; so I consider them well worth inclusion in this œuvre. This is one reason I provide notes for all these poems -- to explain what I can of such considerations, as well as of the place they held in her, and our, lives..

→ NOTE:

In 1993, she summarized the body of her work for an application to the Nebraska Writers Guild as follows:

PUBLICATIONS

(Not including poems published in various school, church, and writing festival publications)

DATE PUBLICATION CIRCULATION # OF LINES PAYMENT

1981 The Lyric 850 14 $50 + 1 year

subscription

1990 Plainsongs ? 21 2 copies + 1

year subscription

1991 Whole Notes 400 35 2 copies

1992 Dragonfly ? 3 none

1993 Brussels Sprout ? 3 none

*1993 Inkstone 100 3 1 copy

(*Accepted)

AWARDS

YEAR AWARD AMOUNT TITLES

1976 1st place, state, 2nd place $2500.00 and a trip My America national; "My America" Bi- to Pennsylvania

centennial Competition sponsored

by The National Council of

Teachers of English and

the State of Pennsylvania

1981 3rd place-- The Lyric's $50.00 Sonnet

College Poetry Contest

1986 2nd place in an American $25.00 a group of poems

Academy of Poets contest

at the University of Nebraska

BODY OF WORK

 A bound volume of my creative master's thesis, a collection of poems entitled Salt Valley Seasons (1986), is available at Love Library at the University of Nebraska.6), is available at Love Library at the University of Nebraska.