Scot Siegel
Scot Siegel, recipient of the 2024 Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award, is a city planner, educator, and author of three chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections, including Tender Currencies. Previous volumes include The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems (2016) and Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (2012) from Salmon Poetry.
Siegel works with Writing the Land, which pairs poets with land trusts nationwide. He received the Oregon Poetry Association Poet’s Choice Award, and the late US Poet Laureate Philip Levine recognized Siegel’s long poem “Pages Torn From a Schoolmarm’s Diary” as Finalist with Honorable Mention in Nimrod International’s 2012 Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize Competition.
Siegel’s poems appear in many journals and are part of the permanent public art installation along TriMet’s Light Rail Orange Line in Portland, Oregon. He has received fellowship residencies with Playa at Summer Lake and Oregon State University’s Spring Creek Project. www.scotsiegel.com
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Poem from Tender Currencies
Terroir of Sorrel
I follow because you know which leaves can be eaten. Oxalis takes on different flavors depending on exposure and elevation. At the intersection of oak and fir that clover curls your lip like a poison. But where lupine blooms under yew a tincture of pippins tickles the tongue. Rung by rung, the higher we climb, the sweeter the roughage.
