Sawgrass Sky: Poems

By: Andrew Hemmert

Narrated by: Rick Keller

Sawgrass Sky is a coming-of-age story, a Floridian memoir-in-verse. Through the speaker’s recounting of his adolescence, the collection addresses themes of religious disillusionment, sexual awakening, body image, environmental degradation, suburbia versus the wild, familial history, and the idea of home contextualized by distance. These poems vary in form and style, including long narratives, meditative sequences, prose poems, and short lyrics. The unifying factor is the speaker’s focus on the place he comes from, and his struggle to define that heritage in terms psychological, natural, and familial.

The poems that comprise this collection have been published widely in reputable literary journals. These magazines include The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Literary Review, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, and Southern Humanities Review.

©2021 Andrew Hemmert (P)2023 TRP: The University Press of SHSU

Critic reviews

“A thought-provoking collection of poetry set in the swampy landscape of Florida.... Andrew Hemmert is a promising poet to watch” (Katherine Hoerth)

"Hemmert reveals a Florida that's left out of the guidebooks...."(Chelsea Rathburn)

"Andrew Hemmert has a scientist's eye and a lyricist's heart. In poems both luscious and austere, he gives life to a version of Florida far removed from the shiny Disneyesque images we've all come to know. His poems are temptingly wild journeys that satiate wanderlust, and readers will not be disappointed...." (Allison Joseph)