Barbara Sabol

Mapping the Borderlands

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Sabol lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, WATERMARK: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023). Her book, IMAGINE A TOWN, won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Prize. Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and the Arts Alive Outstanding Literary Artist of 2024 award. Barbara’s haiku and haibun have been published widely, and her haibun have been recognized by the Haiku Society of America, short-listed for a Touchstone Award by the Haiku Foundation in 2024, and awarded a 2025 Rachel Sutcliffe Haiku-Arts Prize. Barbara conducts workshops through Literary Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Falls Library.  She earned an MFA from Spalding University. When not at her desk, Barbara is working in her garden or walking in the woods. She lives with her bird carver husband and wonder dog.

ABOUT MAPPING THE BORDERLANDS These poems live at the edge of an impassable boundary between human and animal worlds. The work in Mapping the Borderlands turns on the idea that that border is not porous, despite our various attempts to cross it, to puzzle out the mysteries of wild life. The wonder and inviolability of animal otherness, of wildness itself, lie at the beating heart of this collection.

Advance Praise for Mapping the Borderlands: Haibun and Tanka Prose

Sabol displays a wide variety of forms and subject matter to explore connections between human and animal life. Traditional haibun, juxtaposing prose and haiku, are deftly augmented with tanka and one-line haiku, while subjects include wild, domestic, dream, and zoo animals. With insight and wonder, she ponders a question made explicit in the concluding essay: whether humans can know their true nature without a close connection to the animal world. As her poems so eloquently testify, she believes we cannot. — Barry George, author of Sirens and Rain

Quarry swims, cave walks, and gorge hikes are a few of the territories explored in Mapping the Borderlands. Barbara Sabol’s haibun and tanka prose tenderly embrace the realm of “furry, finned, or winged otherness” and gently invite us to explore our inner landscapes of wilderness and wildness. — Marilyn Ashbaugh, Editor, Under the Bashō

Barbara Sabol takes us on a journey where civilization meets the wild and “benevolent mysteries” occur—dolphins coming to the rescue, a beloved dog safe after three days missing, “the god of not-yet” bestowing luck—and where we witness the comfort of nature forever “cycling into what comes next.” —   Cynthia Anderson, author of The Far Mountain 

Sabol’s poetic turns of phrase display her reverence for the flora and fauna of the world and all its “benevolent mysteries.” With a vigorous sense of optimism, the poet wanders the immensity of a polar bear’s dream and shares in the camaraderie of a pod of dolphins. Quiet and contemplative, Sabol offers her readers the tranquility and promise available to each of us when we commune with the “furry, finned or winged otherness” that abounds in every environment. Mapping the Borderlands is a beautiful, heartening book that makes me want to hit the trail. Explore. — Peter Newton, editor of Contemporary Haibun Online

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Imagine a Town
by Barbara Sabol
Winner of the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Manuscript Contest

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Click here to see Barbara read two poems from the collection!

ABOUT IMAGINE A TOWN:

The poems in Imagine A Town reveal how a confederacy of places—a hometown, adopted city, a neighborhood—conspires to shape identity, especially when one’s sense of self butts up against the values and expectations embraced by that place. These narratives convey how a girl’s long view is foreshortened by smokestacks, slim resources, and the rough Alleghenies circling her blue-collar existence. Self-discovery also manifests through a reckoning of events outside the kitchen window, and in the wider world. Conversely, distance from the speaker’s origins gently tightens the grasp of that place as she reconciles inevitable losses and regrets exacted by her departure. Memories of coming-of-age in a time of milkmen and trolley cars prompt a visitation to a hometown that’s taken up residence in the poet’s imagination as she journeys through place and time. Also infusing these poems is the tension of a constructed suburban world imposed on the natural world, such that the sight of a buck in a neighbor’s yard startles a renewed connection with nature, and an awareness of deeper losses. The concept of home, a longing to belong, and the risks and rewards of carving an outsider existence lie at the beating heart of this collection.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR IMAGINE A TOWN:

“Imagine a Town resonates with a strong sense of how hard work (and hard play) shapes the lives of those growing up in a blue-collar community. These poems sing with the earned authority of witness—sharp, clear details etched on the page. Memory casts its spell here not in simple nostalgia, but through a fierce examination and an urge toward preservation as a way of honoring this heritage. She mourns the losses while finding those small moments that sustain us through those losses. Relying on a strong sense of craft and form, Sabol wastes not a word here in these tight, emotionally packed poems.”
 ―Jim Daniels, author of The Perp Walk

Read a sample from this collection at Sheila-Na-Gig online: https://sheilanagigblog.com/the-poets-volume-4-2-winter-2019/2019-sheila-na-gig-editions-poetry-manuscript-contest-winner-barbara-sabol/