Kelly Sargent
Author & Artist
Kelly Sargent
Author & Artist
I have loved languages in multiple forms since I was a child. Whether it be through written, spoken, or visual means, engaging with the desire we have to connect with each other and ourselves has been a lifelong endeavor.
I feel privileged to share samples of my writing and artwork with a welcoming audience.
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 experienced my twin’s daily absence nearly as profoundly as a death. 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.
I also authored a book of modern haiku poems in 2022 entitled Lilacs & Teacups. A poem recognized in the international 2022 Golden Haiku poetry contest received a placard in Washington, D.C. Another haiku in 2022 received a nomination for The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Poems.
My children's book, Sundae Sundays is forthcoming in May 2023.
Other cover art and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in more than sixty literary publications in the United States and abroad, most recently including Rattle and Chestnut Review. My works have received nominations for 2021 Best of the Net, a 2022 Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Poems, and a 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award.
I have written for SIGNews, a newspaper for the Deaf and HOH 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.
Publications, current and forthcoming, include:
Akitsu Quarterly, Ancient Paths, Awakened Voices, Beyond Words, Bivouac Magazine, Book of Matches, Cerasus Magazine, Chestnut Review, 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, Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2022, Haikuniverse, Halcyon Days, The Heron’s Nest, Kingfisher Journal, Kitchen Table Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Magnets and Ladders, Modern Haiku, Moss Piglet, Musing Publications, 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, Sparks of Calliope, Stardust Haiku, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Transient Journal, tsuri-dōrō, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Vita Brevis Press, Wales Haiku Journal, Wingless Dreamer, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Your Daily Poem, and more.
Creative nonfiction has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Reunions, and Twins magazine.
Seeing Voices:
Poetry in Motion
by Kelly Sargent
A poetry chapbook includes reflections on
twinhood, deafness, and “the mirrors through
which we see, lose, and find ourselves again.”
(Kelsay Books, 2022)
Kelly Sargent makes her story the heart of
Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion as she shares realms of experience many of us have never known. Born with a twin sister who is deaf - the poet says “her eyes were her ears” - they are adopted into a military family. Sargent, also having a significant hearing impairment, and her twin learn to communicate with “handheld voices.” She writes with deep love as her poems record their bond… The stories are poignant, heartfelt, and richly poetic.
-Tricia Knoll, author of Checkered Mates
Echoes in My Eyes
by Kelly Sargent
A poignant memoir in verse includes further reflections on Deaf communication, growing up as a twin, and enduring life-altering loss.
Release date: TBD
(individual links below)
Ten Poems
”After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
Phillip Pullman
Sundae Sundays
by Kelly Sargent
Every Sunday for twenty-three years, jolly “Sundae Man” with his crooked white mustache and bright blue flecks in his green eyes has been making ice cream sundaes for anxious families, though why he does so has remained a decades-old mystery. As a helpful distraction from her worry over her baby brother, a little girl becomes Sundae Man’s eager weekly assistant, jotting down ice cream requests and putting stemmed cherries atop towering sundaes. One afternoon, while helping him fill orders with hot fudge, butterscotch syrup, sprinkles and crushed cookies, the little girl solves the mystery to her great delight. This touching story illustrates the deep, lifelong bonds of family, and creatively offers connection, comfort, and reassurance concerning time spent away from loved ones.
Release date: May 2023
Selected works
Art
Hope
Awakened Voices
charcoal and pastels
