Sarah Stockton Book order

Through vivid imagery and emotional depth, the poems explore the complexities of living with chronic illness, blending moments of vulnerability with resilience. Stockton captures a unique life shaped by hospital visits and unconventional encounters, reflecting both anger and grace. Her work offers a poignant insight into the realities faced by those navigating health challenges, creating a powerful narrative that transcends mere survival to embrace a fuller existence.

Sarah Stockton's collection of poems Castaway beautifully exhibits what the poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield has termed "oceanic" thinking-a generosity of attention to connection between the facts of the physical world, and our feelings about them. Watery, fragile, ephemeral-these adjectives describe the speaker's environment, body, and relationship to others. I love these poems because there is something unsafe about them, a glinting of sunlight off the water that startles the reader awake. Stockton's attention challenges our social institutions and complacent thinking, sees both the suffering human sitting on the church pew and the self's smallness of response. Yet what natural joy to be found in these poems, which remind us that "joy abides in the body like an octopus." You will want to carry the place of these poems with you. -Han Vanderhart, PhD, author of What Pecan Light (Bull City Press); host of Of Poetry Podcast; Editor of Moist Poetry Journal and Reviews Editor of EcoTheo Review