Lucille Lang Day

Biography

Lucille Lang Day grew up in Oakland and Piedmont, California. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks and seven full-length collections, including Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (2020) and Becoming an Ancestor (2015), which frequently draw on her background in biology and science education. She has also edited the anthology Poetry and Science: Writing Our Way to Discovery (2021), coedited Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (2018) and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California (2016), and published two children’s books and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story (2012). Her many honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two Josephine Miles – PEN Oakland Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature, and eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. The founder and publisher of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she lives in Oakland, California.

What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?

I converted to Judaism in 1974, and being Jewish informs all of my writing, even when it is not on explicitly Jewish subjects.

Published Works

Poetry (full-lengths)

Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (Blue Light Press, 2020)

Becoming an Ancestor (Cervena Barva Press, 2015)

The Curvature of Blue (Cervena Barva Press, 2009)

Infinities (Cedar Hill Publications, 2002)

Wild One (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2000)

Fire in the Garden (Mother\’s Hen Press, 1997)

Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (Berkeley Poets\’ Workshop and Press, 1982)

Poetry (chapbooks)

Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems (Blue Light Press, 2015)

God of the Jellyfish (Cervena Barva Press, 2007)

The Book of Answers (Finishing Line Press, 2006)

Lucille Lang Day:  Greatest Hits, 1975-2000 (Pudding House Publications, 2001)

Memoir

Married at Fourteen: A True Story (Heyday Books, 2012)

Children’s books

The Rainbow Zoo (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2016)

Chain Letter (Heyday Books, 2005)

Anthologies

Poetry and Science: Writing Our Way to Discovery (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2021)

Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018)

Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2016)

Links to Sample Works

Links to Sample Works 

• About Place Journal, “The Complexity of Life,”
• The Nature of Our Times (Poets for Science), “The Butterflies Are Dying,” “Winter Salmon Run,” “At Lake Tahoe,” “Frogs in Hiding,” and “Newts in Rain”
• Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry, “I Am Amazed” and “Poem to Give to a Lover”

Subject Matter

Aging, Art & Ekphrasis, Childhood, Death, Environment & Climate Crisis, Family, Friendship, Grief & Elegy, History, Jewishness, Love, Marriage, Motherhood/Fertility, Narrative, Nature, Parenting, Politics, War, Math and/or Physics, Visual Art, Feminism, Mental Illness.

Profile created by Kylee Rieger, Yetzirah Intern.