Sandra Yannone
Sandra Yannone (she/they) lives bicoastally in Washington state and Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where she serves as poet laureate. In 2027, she will assume responsibilities as Managing Editor of Connecticut River Review. Salmon Poetry published The Glass Studio (2024) and her debut collection, Boats for Women (2019).
She is co-editor of Unsinkable: Poems Inspired by the Titanic (Salmon 2026) and series editor for Seven Kitchens Press’s A.V. Christie Chapbook Series (women poets over fifty). She serves on the board of the Olympia Poetry Network and on the advisory committee for Poetry by the Sea.
Her poetry and book reviews appear internationally in print and online in Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, SWWIM Every Day, Skylight 47, Prairie Schooner, Booth, CALYX, Lavender Review, Women’s Review of Books, and The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, among countless others. Her work has received an AWP’s Intro Journals Project award and an Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize as well as multiple nominations for the Pushcart and Best of the Net awards.
In March 2020, she co-founded and continues to host the international, intersectional, intergenerational online reading series Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. She also co-hosts Last Tuesdays with Sandy and Thomas for the Olympia Poetry Network and West-East Bicoastal Poets and Beyond online bimonthly. From 2020–2021, she hosted Headmistress Press’s The Collectibles. Headmistress Press honored Yannone as card #85 in its Lesbian Poets Trading Cards series.
Yannone holds undergraduate, master’s, and doctorate degrees in poetry from Wheaton College (Mass.), Emerson College, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, respectively. In 2023, she retired from her career as Faculty Writing Center Director at The Evergreen State College to devote herself fulltime to poetry endeavors known and unknown to her. Visit her at www.sandrayannone.com to inquire about possibilities.
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Poem from Fire at the Big Top
The Arsonist
There is nothing on Earth I wouldn’t want To watch burn. Where I see devotion you see Fire, danger rising, rising, with each unwanted Minute, rising higher. I used to want to be Seen like this, but now I am content to let the flames Do my calling. I am more behind the scenes In control of who I am, uncaged, unashamed, A lion unannounced, licking my wounds clean. We read together at the stand from the same papered news. I am the Courant’s headline staring back at you. The death toll Rises overnight like rancid smoke. I am every family’s worst bruise Ready to pounce. So remember, Tightrope, I control What burns. I become more suspect withheld than crime Resolved. Remember, you become victim, less human, over time.
