We’re Somewhere Else Now

Nominated for a 2025 National Magazine Award in Poetry

In her first collection of new poetry in a decade, Robyn Sarah chronicles the pandemic years with quiet wisdom and her flair for meshing the familiar with the numinous.

In We're Somewhere Else Now, Robyn Sarah's new poems move with ease from the particular to the abstract. These are poems of grief and unexpected change, but the tone is considerate and meditative, resulting in poems of quiet awe at the human experience. Sarah's newest collection shifts with ease between various perspectives: from the first to the third person to a collective we. Each poem is a lit room for the reader to look into: "lit room to lit room."

We're Somewhere Else Now is essentially a collection that chronicles the COVID lockdown, tracking empty, desultory days of isolation and uncertainty, while also highlighting reasons for continuing to pay attention: playing with a grandchild, the rarity of a leap year, the call of the birds.