Sandra Beasley won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book Theories of Falling. Her poems have been featured in journals such as 32 Poems, Blackbird, New Orleans Review, Meridian, and in the 2005 Best New Poets selected by George Garrett. Awards for her work include the 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from Passages North and fellowships to Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Jenny McKean Moore Workshop, the Indiana University Writers' Conference, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she received her M.F.A. from American University and serves on the editorial staff of The American Scholar.

Other poems by Sandra Beasley in Verse Daily:
February 23, 2008:   "Proposal" "Show me a tent of well-dressed witnesses..."
July 9, 2005:   "Sestina Inviting My Sister to Become a Pirate" "We wake to breakfast in a burning house..."

Books by Sandra Beasley: Theories of Falling

Other poems on the web by Sandra Beasley:
"The World War Speaks"
"Parlor Games"
"The Plays of Lilliput"
Three poems
Two poems
Five poems
Three poems
"Making the Crane"

Sandra Beasley's Home Page.

Sandra Beasley's Blog.

About Theories of Falling:

"I kept coming back to these poems—the tough lyric voice that got under my skin. Clear, intent, this poet doesn’t want to fool herself or anybody else. Desire pushes defeat against the wall, and the spirit climbs up from underground."
—Marie Howe

"Sandra Beasley slices her way down the page with precision and punch. Her haunting ‘Allergy Girl’ series will set off such an itch, I doubt you’ll ever fully recover . . . This poet leaves us to smolder and ache in small kingdoms where ‘even the tame dogs dream of biting clear to the bone.’ Theories of Falling is a poetry debut rife with heartbeat, knocking headboards, and the most delicious thunder. Take cover."
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil

"Sandra Beasley’s Theories of Falling has a vivacity and authority of imagination that constantly transforms her subject matter. Thus she can begin a poem called ‘The Story of My Family’ with ‘You’re a tooth I tongue and tongue, / tasting blood as you loosen, // testing the sweet root of the hole.’ Or announce, in another, that ‘sorrows burrowed in above the bone and bloomed.’ Despite their frequent sources in the darker regions of experience, these lyric tales are tonic rather than toxic and written with a jaunty audacity that is utterly winning."
—Gregory Orr

"Some truths induce fevers; others offer fast relief. The unflinching, personal human truths in Sandra Beasley’s debut collection are worth the swallow for, not too long after, we awaken to both our healing and agitation. These stunning poems throb within our temples, as only a pure source of music can. Language—at this most dramatized and artful level—both delights and haunts us, right where it hurts."
—Major Jackson