Poet Profile

Kelly Sargent

A significantly hearing impaired writer and artist adopted in Luxembourg, Kelly Sargent has written for a national newspaper for the Deaf community, and worked with deaf students in education. Her short form poems appear regularly in haiku and senryu journals online and in print, and include a nominee for The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Poems. A small collection has also appeared in Rattle. Her debut book of haiku and senryu entitled Bookmarks (Red Moon Press, 2023) is forthcoming. She is also the author of two memoirs in verse in which she reflects on growing up with her deaf twin sister in Europe and the United States. She serves as an editor for a literary journal.

Awards and Other Honors:

The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems 2022 (Nomination); Golden Haiku Poetry Contest 2022 (Recognition); The Heron’s NestReaders' Choice Awards 2022 (Special Mention); Mukai Haiku Festival Poetry Competition 2023 (Winner, Nature category); Ron Rash Award in Poetry 2023 (Finalist); Eric Hoffer Award 2022 (Nomination); Best of the Net 2021 (Nomination); The H. Gene Murtha Memorial Senryu Contest 2023 (Honorable Mention).

Books Published:

Bookmarks (Red Moon Press, 2023), a collection of haiku and senryū; Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, 2022); Echoes in My Eyes (Kelsay Books, 2024).

campfire sparks
teenagers
slip away

hospice book cart
bookmarks
between the pages

maid-of-honor dress
the hem
beginning to unravel

baby’s first steps
a mother’s breath
on tiptoe

without
my consent
pond reflection

wearing mom’s sweater
her arms
around me again

Credits:

“campfire sparks” - Frogpond Volume 45:1, Winter 2022; “hospice book cart” - The Heron’s Nest Volume XXIV, Number 4, December 2022; “maid-of-honor dress” - Modern Haiku volume 53.1, Winter/Spring 2022; “baby’s first steps” - Wales Haiku Journal Spring 2022; “without my consent” - Presence Issue 71, 2021; “wearing mom’s sweater” - Cold Moon Journal June 3, 2023.