Call for Essays: The Poets We Return To

Over the years, one of the questions I have been asked most often is, “Who are your favorite poets?” I never know quite how to answer because my answer changes with the seasons. Some poets stay beside me for years. Others arrive when I need them most, and I find myself reading the same collection over and over until I begin hearing their rhythms in my own thinking. Their poems become companions. They remind me to pay attention, to notice the world more carefully, to trust an image, to linger with uncertainty, to write.

As teachers, we spend a great deal of time introducing students to poems. We talk about craft, meaning, historical context, and the choices writers make. We recommend collections, build classroom libraries, and search for poems that might invite students into reading and writing. I have been wondering what we might learn if we turned our attention for a little while toward our own reading lives and the poets who have quietly shaped us.

Ethical ELA is beginning a new essay series called The Poets We Return To, and I’d love to invite you to contribute.

I’m hoping for reflective essays from teachers, teacher educators, authors, writing coaches, editors, librarians, and poets about a writer whose work continues to accompany you. Perhaps you first encountered the poet in high school or graduate school. Maybe a friend placed a book in your hands at exactly the right moment. Maybe you return to a single poem every January or carry a well-worn collection whenever you travel. However the relationship began, tell us the story.

Along the way, introduce us to a few poems that have stayed with you. Because of copyright, we won’t reproduce complete poems, but you are welcome to discuss individual poems, quote brief passages when appropriate, and point readers toward the collections where they can continue reading. I’d love to hear what you notice in the poet’s language, images, structure, or voice, not as a literary analysis for a classroom assignment but as one writer paying close attention to another. How has reading this poet influenced your own writing? How has your understanding of the poems changed over the years? What keeps drawing you back?

I’m less interested in the poems many of us were assigned in school than in the poet whose book lives on your nightstand, travels in your suitcase, or waits beside your favorite chair, the one whose words continue to find you at different moments in your life. I hope these essays begin with your life as a reader instead of your lesson plans. Tell us about the poet you read when no one has assigned the reading and no students are waiting for discussion questions. 

Although many readers will certainly discover ideas they may later bring into their classrooms, my hope is that these essays begin with our lives as readers and writers. I believe teachers deserve rich reading lives, and I have come to think that our teaching grows from those lives in ways that are often difficult to measure yet easy to recognize. (At the end of this call my sample essay.)

Here are a few questions to help you begin thinking:

• How did you first encounter this poet?
• Which poems do you find yourself returning to again and again?
• What do you notice in the poet’s craft that has stayed with you?
• How has reading this poet influenced your own writing or your way of seeing the world?
• Why do you think this poet continues to accompany you after all these years?
• If someone were reading this poet for the first time, which collection or two or three poems would you encourage them to begin with?

Essays will likely be between 800 and 1,500 words, although I care much more about a thoughtful essay than an exact word count. If your essay includes photographs of your well-loved books, notes in the margins, or places where you often read or write, I’d be delighted to include them as well.

If you would like to contribute to the series, please send your completed essay to Sarah J. Donovan by October 1, 2026 at sarah.j.donovan9@gmail.com. We will publish essays throughout the coming year, creating a growing collection of poets who have shaped the reading and writing lives of this community.

If you’d like to see an example, here is Sarah’s essay.