Elizabeth Sylvia
LightNews LightNews
banner
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Elizabeth Sylvia
@esylviapoet.bsky.social
850 followers 740 following 990 posts
Poet, teacher, Massachusetts Class D Driver. SCYTHE (River River Books, 2026), MY LITTLE BOOK OF DOMESTIC ANXIETIES (Ballerini Books, 2025), NONE BUT WITCHES (3MH Press Book Award, 2022)

elizabethsylviapoet.net
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Elizabeth Sylvia @esylviapoet.bsky.social · Dec 19
I am beyond thrilled to be joining the amazing authors at @riverriverbooks.bsky.social , and I can't say enough about @hanvanderhart.bsky.social and @amorak.bsky.social 's wisdom and generosity.
riverriverbooks.bsky.social River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · Dec 19
Midwinter new includes—WELCOME, Elizabeth Sylvia and Zöe Ryder White to River River Books! 🎉🎉🎉

Sylvia’s Scythe and White’s The Visible Field will be published in early 2026–read more about both manuscripts and poets in the image and alt text below. Congratulations!
Spring 2026 Scythe limns the verdant space of the cultivated garden (from Versailles to Massachusetts), the reality of rising environmental heat, and the cost of human flourishing. Alongside Marie Antoinette and the bees, the speaker engages French colonialism, the extractive sugarcane trade, and the language of flight and escape-who can fly, and who can escape. Bio: Elizabeth Sylvia's first book, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare's Women (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. She has been a semifinalist or finalist in competitions sponsored by the Burnside Review, C&R Press, DIAGRAM, Thirty West, Rare Swan and Wolfson Press, and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. She has received fellowships from the West Chester University Poetry Center and the Longleaf Writers Conference. She is the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize. Her chapbook My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties is forthcoming from Ballerini Press. The Visible Field The poems in White's debut collection live in the space between the mind's internal life and the body's external world. Meditative and expansive, quiet and joyous, these poems listen and look past the surface of things. Pay attention, they urge, and we do. Bio: Zoë Ryder White (she/her) has had poems appearing in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. Her most recent chapbook, Via Post, was a finalist for Tupelo Press' Snowbound Chapbook award and won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. Her chapbook, HYPERSPACE, was the editors' choice pick for the Verse Tomaz Salamun Prize in 2020 and is available from Factory Hollow Press. She co-authored A Study in Spring, with Nicole Callihan. Another collaboration with Nicole, Elsewhere, won the Sixth Finch chapbook competition in 2019. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching.
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Repost with the last book you enjoyed, and we’ll enter you in a drawing for one of our new fall poetry titles! 🍂📚💙

We are thankful for our readers ❤️

riverriverbooks.org/store/
Cover of FIELD NOTES, design by Alban Fischer Cover photograph of field landscape and lake in distance and mountains by author E.G. CUNNINGHAM POEMS "This field transforms looking to wanting.” RIVERRIVERBOOKS.ORG Cover of encounters for the living in the dead, designed by Alban Fischer Cover beaches at Dutch still life with lemons and grapes and oysters ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD POEMS JAMEELA F. DALLIS "I have become siren, a hallowed hollow singing thing-" RIVERRIVERBOOKS.ORG
November 25, 2025 at 11:44 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
I'm starting an Old English course this winter and it sucks to wonder if everyone else in the class is a secret white supremacist.
November 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
It’s a poetry taster on a winter’s evening 📚💙❄️ Hope to see you there!

@amorak.bsky.social @pittella.bsky.social @esylviapoet.bsky.social @martin65.bsky.social #poetry
All our chapbook beauties and then: Join Ast December 7 at 7pm ET on Zoom RSVP FOR MEETING LINK TO RIVERRIVERBOOKSEVENTS@GMAIL.COM
November 16, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
samrasnake.bsky.social
Pleased to announce the release of Fallen Leaves, my new poetry collection (Ballerini Book Press). Preorders available. Thanks for the kind words, Suzanne Frischkorn & James Owens. Excited that future works will have a home at BBP.
@suzfrischkorn.bsky.social

ballerinibookpress.ch/fallen-leave...
Ballerini Book PressSlender. Never Spineless.FALLEN LEAVES by Sam Rasnake
We are thrilled to announce the release of Sam’s new poetry collection FALLEN LEAVES, as well as his signing a long term, author contract with Ballerini Book Press. Our long literary collabor…
ballerinibookpress.ch
November 16, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
moistpoetryjournal.bsky.social
And if you’d like to hear Catherine Rockwood READ from DOGWITCH…mark your calendars A Winter’s Night Chapbook reading on 12/7 @ 7pm ET! ❄️ RSVP details in alt text.

@amorak.bsky.social @pittella.bsky.social @esylviapoet.bsky.social @martin65.bsky.social @hanvanderhart.bsky.social
AMORAK HUEY CARLOS A. PITTELLA CATHERINE ROCKWOOD ELIZABETH SYLVIA HAN VANDERHART A Winter’s Night Chapbook Reading 12/7,7pm ET PROPERSITIONS CARLOS A. PITTELLA CACTUS PRESS CHAPBOOK SERIES Hawk & Moon Han VanderHart my little book of domestic anxieties Elizabeth Sylvia ballerinas book press DOGWITCH CATHERINE ROCK WOOD EXTINCTION LEVEL Amorak Huey Join Us December 7 at 7pm ET on Zoom RSVP FOR MEETING LINK TO RIVERRIVERBOOKSEVENTS@GMAIL.COM
November 16, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
moistpoetryjournal.bsky.social
For our Sunday morning readers: a new review of Catherine Rockwood’s DOGWITCH, by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza! ☕️☀️📚 #booksky #poetry #review

@martin65.bsky.social
@violetagm.bsky.social
November 16, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
emmabolden.bsky.social
heyyyyy i've got four poems in the latest issue of @loverseyepress.bsky.social about being a woman in this apocalyptic hellscape, including this one. you can visit the poems holding my rage here: www.loverseyepress.com/post/4-poems...
DISCOUNT SHOPPING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE All of us women in T.J. Maxx are sweating. We talk ice packs, plant estrogens, black cohosh, the shots that will lead us to love our bodies by losing most of our bodies, the internet says. The hangers slip off their clothes. It is not summer. The radio proclaims a high of 90°. I’m looking more than ever at the mirror, which looks back at me more like my mother than ever. Eat your vegetables, the mirror says. Hold your shoulders up. Why do you never mop. I glow a rage so incandescent it’s indistinguishable from the sun, which the internet wishes would just go ahead and explode. A friend sends an article about an asteroid that may or may not be aimed to end the earth. Destroy me, daddy, my friend writes. Three emojis eject their tongues from pink half-moon mouths. I refuse to walk down the pinkest aisles. This isn’t the time for pale, I say. This isn’t the time for longing or low-slung pants, for pretending the eyes are windows for anything other than reflected light. All of us women in T.J. Maxx dwell in bodies that have fewer rights than the day they were born. I wish my teeth would grow into knives, my nails into actual nails. At a frequency too high for human ears, each woman’s body emits a constant wave of sound. Like a siren. Like a howl.
October 22, 2025 at 7:52 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Nothing better than hearing that the AP Lit group chat has been blowing up over their story homework 😄
October 22, 2025 at 7:32 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
IMO, this accounts for about 80% of the behavioral problems in schools. Students act out bc they know they don't have the academic skills to succeed. Remediating those skills costs too much, so we pretend that we can social-emotional them out of it.
tressiemcphd.bsky.social Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Oct 22
What I’ve taken in over the last couple years is that when people have an irrationally outsized emotional response to doing a task,90% of the time it is because they can’t do it — not that they won’t do it. They can’t. And most people will die trying to prove why that’s someone else’s fault.
October 22, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
lyfaulk.bsky.social
@fklein907.bsky.social 🤝 @havehashad.com = exquisite

www.havehashad.com/hadposts/jun...
june, 1989 by Frances Klein
mother went to the hospital and said i was coming said earthquakes were shaking father’s foundations cracking him down to the roots they sent her away told her not to return until she was spitting s...
www.havehashad.com
October 20, 2025 at 11:39 AM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
I continue researching How To Be A Female Artist even though the answer remains Be Rich Or Marry Well
October 12, 2025 at 9:55 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Is it ethical to be a frog when the snow is on the ground?
subpresspoetry.bsky.social Subpress Poetry @subpresspoetry.bsky.social · Oct 12
“Ethics” by Kyla Houbolt, from her forthcoming book, *Becoming Altar* asterismbooks.com/product/beco... @luaz.bsky.social
Ethics Is it ethical to be a frog when the snow is on the ground? To be a frog in winter, in a sound mind and body of amphibious elegance? It isn't right! sing the bugs in their dens, we never got a chance to have amphibious elegance, we only got chitinous chic which is far far less groovy. The bugs grouse among themselves, crowding the rotting tree trunks, clicking and whirring and taking committee votes. But the unconcerned frog, who is not hungry for bug at the moment, casts no stones. There is no call to fiddle with all them bugs! thinks the frog to itself, preening in its winter mudhole. Meanwhile, Creator, in the form of Raven, listens in with amusement. None of these creatures knows what's to come, or how blessed their lives are. Though that smug frog might need to be taken down a peg or two, he thinks. Maybe it's time to send in the crows. And of course the poets are listening to all this, and each one is writing notes, and all the notes are different. This is the blessing and the curse of poetry: that it never agrees and that it never agrees. Ethics? Maybe in the spaces between.
October 12, 2025 at 3:09 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
This lady?
Photo of agent Peggy Carter, Captain America’s girlfriend
October 9, 2025 at 12:50 AM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
I've started doing pleasure reading for 10-15 minutes a class with my sophomores. When I say it's reading time, their books are out in >1 minute and the classroom is dead silent.
October 4, 2025 at 6:45 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Every time I see the VSC residencies open I look at the applications and then I remember that they're $2700 and I could go to Paris for two weeks for that.
September 30, 2025 at 12:42 AM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Jackass: The Movie goes to Washington
patriottakes.bsky.social PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes.bsky.social · Sep 29
Pete Hegseth accidentally flipping a skateboard into his nuts on live TV
September 29, 2025 at 7:55 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
theshorepoetry.bsky.social The Shore @theshorepoetry.bsky.social · May 20
Susan L Leary "On Sundays, I Do Laundry" — THE SHORE www.theshorepoetry.org/susan-l-lear...
September 28, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
upfromsumdirt.bsky.social
author copies have arrived; hardback on the left and paperback on the right...

and im not any good for the rest of the day.
photo of 2 stacks of dark blue poetry books of the same title, the shoes of the Fisherman's Wife. the left stack is two hardcover and the right stack is 5 paperbacks.
September 27, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
swwim.bsky.social
It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of Jenn Martelli. She was a wonderful poet, colleague, collaborator, and friend to all. Her light will be dearly missed.
September 26, 2025 at 7:00 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Jenn was a gifted writer and she was so generous to other writers—to me, in specific and special ways. I'll miss her voice.
lesleymwheeler.bsky.social Lesley Wheeler @lesleymwheeler.bsky.social · Sep 26
I love Jenn Martelli’s fierce and lovely poetry so much, and she was such a generous person. Miss you already, Jenn.
September 26, 2025 at 3:13 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
@notatawp.bsky.social should have a little sister called NOMFA, who wants to play with the big kids but gets brushed off all the time 😜
September 26, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Sylvia
nfako.bsky.social
Just finished this book and. Wow. @riverriverbooks.bsky.social The way the poems shift their language in a parallel gesture to the ever changing photographs. So good!
A photo of the cover of Field Notes by E.G. Cunningham. The cover shows a vast hazel field with gray sky above.
September 24, 2025 at 3:06 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Supposedly material goods don’t bring happiness but the little electric teapot I bought for my classroom says otherwise.
September 25, 2025 at 4:37 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
Can billionaires just not write books.
September 25, 2025 at 4:17 PM
esylviapoet.bsky.social
My first Best of the Net nomination, thanks to @thedodgemag.bsky.social
Field Pansy My nectar wooed the laden bees tumbling in the grass, flagrant below the sun, every pistil shuddering as their busy legs brushed me with fertile news Now there is less in the air, less show, less reaching towards the other So be it Bunkered, self-contained, fed rations of the known, resilience burrows each looped gene, makes my descendants pale duplicates Hoarding and blameless, I drop little pollen in the world’s begging cup, against present and expected loss, unfold scant shrunken blooms
September 24, 2025 at 11:37 PM