Kelly Sargent

Bio

Born hard of hearing and adopted in Luxembourg, I grew up with my deaf twin sister in Europe and the United States. I mourned the loss of her, in a sense, when she left to attend a residential school for the Deaf as a preteen, and again when she suffered a life-changing injury as an adult. A collection of poems, a memoir in verse, celebrating our twinhood and processing my loss appears in my award-nominated chapbook, Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, 2022). In childhood, I had also taken on the roles of sign language interpreter and teacher, and I later experienced my twin’s daily absence as a profound loss. I then began a search for my own identity and place in a world without a mirror.

Links to several book reviews appear on my book page at Kelsay Books:

https://kelsaybooks.com/products/seeing-voices-poetry-in-motion

Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion can also be found at RIT in Rochester, New York 

in the poetry section of the university’s library. A second collection entitled Echoes in My Eyes is forthcoming (Kelsay Books, 2024).

I am also the author of a collection of modern haiku and senryu poems entitled Bookmarks (Red Moon Press, 2023). Short form poetry honors include: The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems 2022 (Nomination), The H. Gene Murtha Memorial Senryu Contest 2023 (Honorable Mention), Golden Haiku Poetry Contest 2022 (Recognition), The Heron’s Nest Readers' Choice Awards 2022 (Special Mention), and The Mukai Haiku Festival Poetry Competition 2023 (Winner, Nature category). 

My profile and selected haiku appear in The Living Haiku Anthology at https://livinghaikuanthology.com/index-of-poets/229-s-poets/504-sargent,-kelly.html

My Poet Profile at The Haiku Foundation appears at https://thehaikufoundation.org/poet-details/?IDclient=2848

Other cover art and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in more than eighty literary journals in the United States and abroad, most recently including Rattle, Chestnut Review, and Broad River Review. Honors include: The Ron Rash Award in Poetry 2023 (Finalist), Eric Hoffer Award 2022 (Nomination), and Best of the Net 2021 (Nomination).

I have written for SIGNews, a newspaper for the Deaf and hard of hearing community, and worked with deaf students in education. I also reviewed for a literary magazine whose mission is to make visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors. I currently serve as Creative Nonfiction Editor of The Bookends Review and on the Editorial Board of Beyond Words. 

I am also the author of a children's storybook entitled Sundae Sundays, Winner of the 2023 Firebird Book Award (Children’s Inspirational).

Journal publications (current and forthcoming):

Akitsu Quarterly, Ancient Paths, Awakened Voices, Beyond Words, Bivouac Magazine, Book of Matches, Broad River Review, Cerasus Magazine, Chestnut Review, Chrysanthemum, Cold Moon Journal, Discretionary Love, Ephemeral Elegies, Eucalyptus & Rose, Eunoia Review, Failed Haiku-A Journal of English Senryu, First Frost, The Five-Two, Frogpond, Front Porch Review, Gyroscope Review, Haiku Commentary, haikuNetra Journal, Haikuniverse, Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2022 and 2023, Halcyon Days, hedgerow, The Heron’s Nest, Kingfisher Journal, Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Lake, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Magnets and Ladders, Modern Haiku, Moss Piglet, Musing Publications, NeverEnding Story, Newfound, New Note Poetry, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Pan Haiku Review, Poetic Sun, Poetry Life and Times, Poetry Pea Journal, Presence, Prolific Press, Prometheus Dreaming, Prospectus, Prune Juice, The Purpled Nail (Underwood Press),  Rattle, redrosethorns magazine, Rue Scribe, Sheepshead Review, Silver Birch Press, Sparks of Calliope, Stardust Haiku, Stone Poetry Quarterly, tsuri-dōrō, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Versification, Visual Verse, Vita Brevis Press, Wales Haiku Journal, Wingless Dreamer, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Your Daily Poem, and others.