During this period of coronavirus, we all are searching for new outlets of enjoyment and entertainment. The days seem to blend together as we all try to stay motivated enough to do our work, spend time with our thoughts, and trudge through each day wishing for normalcy to return.

While there are certainly many drawbacks to this pandemic, we all at least have more time. More time to learn, more time to stay inside, maybe even more time to explore a new medium rather than watch the same show, listen to the same music, or read the same book. Since many of us feel trapped at home, we can at least choose what we do to make ourselves happy.

One outlet that has become increasingly more popular during the pandemic is poetry. A Los Angeles Times article published in May was titled, “Reading poetry under lockdown is easier than baking sourdough. And it’s healthier”. So, while we may feel trapped inside, poetry can provide a great escape for us. Gillian Conoley, Kathleen Winter and Hollis Robbins are all Sonoma State faculty, who have recently published poetry collections of their own.

Gillian Conoley, an English professor at Sonoma State University, has released several poetry books throughout her writing career. Conoley’s most recent book, “A Little More Red Sun on the Human”, is comprised of her own poetry works, from 1984 to present day.

 According to Conoley during an interview with Nate Galvan, Sonoma State’s communications specialist, the selected poems in the collection “engage with several themes… the dream and failure of American democracy, issues of race and gender, the relations between matter and spirit, and consciousness and perception.” Said Conoley.

Conoley’s work has pushed her through as a finalist for the 89th year of the California Book Awards.

Conoley is not the only Sonoma State professor who has recently published a collection of poems. Kathleen Winter, professor of creative writing at Sonoma State, published “Transformer” in June 2020. Reviewer Dean Rader says that the poems “are concerned with memory and trauma, violence and vulnerability, the domestic and the wild.” Rader adds that the poems are crackling with “electricity and change”. 

Winter has released several other works before writing “Transformer”, including “I will not Kick my Friends”, winner of the 17th Annual Elixir Press Poetry Awards and “Nostalgia for the Criminal Past”, a narrative of loss, grief and survival which won Winter the Antivenom Poetry Prize. Winter’s poems have also been published by The New Republic, Cincinnati Review and Poetry London.

The last of Sonoma State’s faculty to recently release a poetry related book is dean Hollis Robbins, who wrote, “Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition”. 

The book tells the story of African American sonnet influence, detailing the authors of such sonnets, their works, as well as criticism and analysis of historically important poems by African American poets during the civil rights movement. 

Robbins participated in the Close Talking poetry podcast last month in which she spoke about her book, and felt inspired to write it when she found that “there was very little written about the African American sonnet tradition.”, Robbins’ book was released in July of this year.

So, although we may be stuck inside, we at least have the works of talented poets and writers, who give us pieces to pass the time.