(Photo credit: William Short)
Sarah Maclay is a celebrated poet, educator, and essayist whose work bridges the worlds of creative writing and the performing arts. Her fifth poetry collection, Nightfall Marginalia (What Books Press), was a Foreword INDIES Finalist for Poetry, and her latest chapbook, The H.D. Sequence—A Concordance (Walton Well Press), continues her tradition of lyrical exploration. Earlier collections include The "She" Series: A Venice Correspondence (a braided collaboration with poet Holaday Mason), Music for the Black Room, The White Bride, and her debut full-length, Whore, which was awarded the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of three earlier chapbooks and “Fugue States Coming Down the Hall,” which was published in the anthology Scenarios: Scripts to Perform and performed at Oberlin College and Beyond Baroque.
Maclay’s poetry and essays have been widely published in renowned journals and anthologies, including The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Poetry International, where she served as Book Review Editor for a decade. Her interdisciplinary collaborations include classical compositions inspired by her poetry, such as the Kostas Rekleitis art song sequence, Identity Had Gone, and contributions to galleries and theaters. She is also the host and producer of The Poetry of Night for Poetry.LA.
A recipient of numerous accolades, among them a Yaddo residency, a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellowship, and a Pushcart Special Mention, Maclay taught creative writing and literature at Loyola Marymount University for almost two decades, and offers periodic workshops at Beyond Baroque, and privately.
A Montana native, Maclay’s vibrant career reflects a harmonious blend of her rural upbringing with the urban vibrancy of Los Angeles. This one-on-one interview shares Sarah Maclay’s background and experience writing Nightfall Marginalia.
Tell us about Nightfall Marginalia.
Sometimes, love returns, with both miracle and mystery, even if fleetingly, in a world of constraints and difficulty--and sometimes this feels as wedded to dream and liminal consciousness as it does to anything that can happen in the light of day, as it wakes us to the shadowy realms of the nocturnal and desire as well as memory, to all we may have buried along the way, and to what we may yet want or still have to bury. Meanwhile, even in the autumn of life, our senses may be called upon to be, once again, more fully alive, as past and present, art and life all resonate together.
What inspired you to write Nightfall Marginalia?
Nightfall Marginalia emerged from my desire to focus for a time primarily on “the life,” whatever it was going to be, allowing poetry to arise organically, as if from the margins–decentered a little, this poetry nonetheless became a central repository for this time. Writing from a place of geographic and personal marginality, I embraced the idea of poetry itself as a kind of marginalia—notes scribbled in the periphery of life’s unfolding narrative. The collection delves into the threshold between wakefulness and sleep, where dreams and art spark creativity, and explores a diverse array of forms, from list poems to free verse, prose poetry to experiments based in the French OuLiPo constraint techniques.
An early jolt of inspiration came from an article on Lilith, encouraging me to embrace the shadowy, unwieldy, and often overlooked aspects of existence. While Lilith herself does not appear in the book, her mythical essence, representing the unrecognized and unsung, or at times perhaps even what Jung might find the dangerous or unwelcome “shadow side,” shaped its thematic undercurrent and heightened a sense of permission to dwell in this territory. Ultimately, this collection became an exploration of rekindled, late-in-life desire among the lush if sometimes ravaged cityscapes of Los Angeles, a continued search for authentic experience woven with recollections of other haunting locales and situations, both nocturnal and diurnal, and the mysterious and fleeting moments that can exist in rich and unexpected ways, when embraced, in the freshest renderings I could imagine.
How did your background and experience influence your writing?
My journey into poetry began at 13, jogged by the emotional resonance and fresh beauty of Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo & Juliet. It was (and may still be) unabashedly romantic, but I quickly became intrigued with more experimental approaches. Even before that, I was deeply immersed in the arts—our home in rural Montana was alive with nightly readings from my mother, art, music, and a love of plays and films. Nature played a profound role too, shaping a sense of daily wonder and the practice of a necessary attentiveness that found its way into my writing.
Early on, I drew inspiration from the works of Lorca, Merwin, Sexton, and Cummings. At Oberlin, I discovered the evocative poetry of Louise Glück and Jean Valentine, while live encounters with Tomas Tranströmer, Franz Wright, and David St. John—who later became a mentor—further deepened my understanding of craft. In Los Angeles, Cecilia Woloch’s guidance and, later, mentorship from Ralph Angel, Mary Ruefle, and other remarkable teaching poets at Vermont College’s MFA program sharpened my voice.
Workshops and readings at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA, cemented my connection to the vibrant creative community there, one that continues to influence my work today.
What is one message you would like readers to remember?
Stay open to the senses, and to eros, to forgiveness, to love, to surprise.
Even without a conventional “happy ending,” life can become unexpectedly richer. Embrace the experiences of the night, whether waking or sleeping, as much as the day.
The tapestry is woven, made, from all of it.
Purchasing the Book
Nightfall Marginalia has received positive reviews from well-known literary organizations, authors, and reviewers around the world. Reviewer Cynthia Hogue writes, “Maclay’s poetry brims with such an exquisite sense of beauty and truth that I hushed in the end with awe.” In addition, poet Louise Mathias writes, “A voluptuous enactment of both a ruminative intuition and an exuberant intelligence…one of contemporary poetry’s most compelling sensualists, this is Maclay at the height of her bewitching powers.”
The book is available for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online bookstores. Readers are encouraged to purchase their copy today: https://www.amazon.com/Nightfall-Marginalia-Sarah-Maclay/dp/B0CLJ4NQBD
To connect with Sarah and learn more about her work, visit: https://www.sarahmaclay.com. You can also find her on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Media Contact
Company Name: Author News Network
Contact Person: Media Relations
Email: Send Email
Country: United States
Website: authornewsnetwork.com
