Getty, Sarah 1943–

(Sarah Sovereign Getty)

PERSONAL:

Born January 27, 1943, in Berwyn, IL; daughter of John Howard and Davina Graham Ely Sovereign; married David James Getty, June 12, 1965; children: Lisa Elaine. Education: Stanford University, B.A., 1965; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, M.A., 1966, Ph.D., 1969. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Unitarian Universalist. Hobbies and other interests: Choral singing, gardening, nature.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bedford, MA. E-mail—sg@sarahgetty.net.

CAREER:

Poet, writer, editor, and creative writing coach. Rhode Island College, Providence, assistant professor, 1969-76; New England Foundation for Humanities, Boston, MA, project director, 1988-92, program officer, 1992-94, executive director, 1994-96; University of Massachusetts, Lowell, associate director for corporate and foundation relations, 1998-99; Wheelock College, Boston, MA, grants officer, 1999-2003.

MEMBER:

Unitarian Universalist Association, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Cambridge Poetry Prize, 2002, for The Land of Milk and Honey; Barbara Bradley Prize, New England Poetry Club, 2004; Pulitzer Prize nominee and National Book Award nominee, both for Bring Me Her Heart; Long Story Short Award, 2006, for "Out on the Lake."

WRITINGS:

The Land of Milk and Honey (poems), University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1996.

Bring Me Her Heart (poems), HHB/Higganum Hill Books (Higganum, CT), 2005.

Contributor of poems to periodicals and journals, including Paris Review, Eleventh Muse, Kalliope, Calyx, and Western Humanities Review. Contributor of fiction to Iowa Review, Chesapeake Bay Reader, and Larcom Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sarah Getty is an American writer and poetry coach. Born in Berwyn, Illinois, on January 27, 1943, she grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Getty earned a bachelor of arts degree from Stanford University in 1965 and moved across the country to undertake graduate studies at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania. She completed a master of arts degree in 1966 and followed up in 1969 with a Ph.D. in English literature with a focus on Old and Middle English. She coaches poets and writers, and her clients have won prizes as well as published novels and collections of poems.

Getty published her first book of poetry, The Land of Milk and Honey, in 1996. Getty's debut collection deals with the lives of women in her family and with her own experience as a daughter and mother. A contributor to Publishers Weekly commented that the title poem is "a glittering synthesis of the entire collection." The contributor also described one of the collection's poems, "That Woman," as "a graceful tribute to generational continuation." The same critic summarized that "Getty explores women's lives with deft intelligence and no sentimentality" throughout the collection of poems.

Getty's second book of poetry, Bring Me Her Heart, was published in 2005. Nominated for both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, the collection of poems includes retellings of Greek myths and old stories, dramatic monologues by authors and fictional characters, and a sequence of poems on the death of the poet's mother. Booklist contributor Ray Olson remarked that because Getty "has learned her craft, she makes meter, rhyme, and formal stanzas the vehicles of winning, natural expression." A contributor to the Midwest Book Review described Bring Me Her Heart as "an eclectic and vivid … collection of harmonic and confluent poetry."

Getty told CA: "I credit my mother with awakening my interest in writing by reading me excellent children's stories and poetry. I hope that my writings will help people see the connections between the surfaces and depths of their own experience."