"Richmond Bard" Inspired by 38-year-long Love Affair

By Fred Loetterle

Her cuisine is poetic, her poetry delicious.

Life and art are savory feasts for the beloved bard of the Richmond, Susan Marie Herron Sibbet. She is a poet, chef, novelist, publisher, poetry teacher, gardener, good neighbor ... mom.

"Poetry is life and life poetry," Sibbet said.

Sibbet, the poet who served up "Burnt Toast and Other Recipes" to the public in 1987 (The "SF Chronicle" said her poetry was far better than Jim Morrison's of The Doors), has cooked up another creation, "No Easy Light."

"No Easy Light" was significantly inspired by Sibbet's reunion with her daughter, Valentine, whom she gave up for adoption when she was three days old. Three years ago, they reunited. Valentine is a successful immigration attorney living and working in southern New Jersey, married with two boys of her own.

They reached out to each other and now have a friendship and mother-daughter relationship that is growing deeper by the day.  Their lost time is the inspiration for "Child of Ice," a poem written after Valentine's birth, which laments: "I call across the river/I cannot save us both."

Sibbet is married to David Laing Sibbet, president of The Grove, an organization that promotes innovative business techniques. They have four children - Thom, Valentine, Jerda and Phil.

She describes herself as a "brownie-making" homemaker who once used e.e. cummings' freedom from syntax to help her overcome an early bout of writer's block.

Sibbet was born at Pearl Harbor the day before the infamous attack in 1941, the middle of five daughters born to a Navy officer.

She has a dazzling academic record: a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, Bunting Institute Fellow (Radcliffe/Harvard), B.S. in Education from the University of Virginia, M.A. in English from Northwestern, M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and writing residences at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin and Soapstone in Oregon.

Sibbet has worked with California Poets in the Schools for decades, teaching poetry to thousands of children from kindergarten through high school in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. Her books include "Toast," "Suspensions" (a collaboration) and "Under Suspicion of Sisters."

Sibbet's poetry captures the feel, smell and taste - the nitty gritty - of everyday things, such as coffee and chocolate.

In "The Longing for Coffee," she makes the reader feel "the bitter/thick taste of it against the mouth/roof, the knowing/back of the tongue" and then gives a jolt:

"Light pulls me inside, and the taste

is the crumbling edge from the acrid binding

of a book left hidden on a high shelf."

The Sibbets have been married for 38 years. The couple glowed as they recounted how they first met at Northwestern University, where he was studying journalism and she English.

Susan says the relationship got serious, fast.

Today, when David pops in on one of her many readings around the neighborhood and Bay Area, Sibbet loves to recite, "We Dance the Blue Right Out" just for him.

Susan Sibbet's works are available  from Sixteen Rivers Press, P.O. Box 640663, San Francisco, CA 94164. Phone: (415) 273-1303. Fax: (415) 221-5116. E-mail: info@sixteenrivers.com. Website: www.sixteenrivers.com.