Sanctuary at Unity Farm transports us to the intimate world of a small New England animal rescue farm to experience the peace and connection the poet finds while visiting with and writing about the beings she encounters there as the Sanctuary’s poet in residence. Throughout, in poems of grace and humor, she explores the interplay of memory, imagination and desire to give, as she says, “voice to the hope of shade” and a glimpse of whom we might become as we seek safety and relief for the animals and for ourselves.

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In Sanctuary at Unity Farm, Stepakoff has established herself as the William Blake of the Barnyard Set.

–Francisco Goldman, author of Monkey Boy

Sherri Stepakoff’s poetry is not just about a sanctuary, it is a sanctuary. This is a book to keep by your side and read, and then re-read. Her poems offer a place of comfort, of humor, of love and a reminder, as she wrote, of “the impulse to live on.”

–Jeffrey S. Cramer, editor of The Portable Thoreau

In her debut collection, Sherri Stepakoff documents the comfort her speaker derives from living among rescued animals who survive and find joy despite the challenges of their previous lives. Like the creatures who sing through brays, grunts, calls and cries, the poet sings her truth, too, always conscious of her role, to shape words artfully to give voice to deep emotions. Rhymed couplets, praise poem, meditation, villanelle, Ars poetica, free verse—Stepakoff skillfully deploys a range of poetic forms, giving strong proof of her raison d’etre: “I record these things, and some that I invent, in my poems.”

–Lynne Viti, poet laureate emerita of Westwood, Massachusetts

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Sherri Stepakoff is a Boston area poet whose poems have appeared in Passagers, Off the Coast, Notable Works’ environmental anthologies Voices of the Earth: The Future of Our Planet (III and IV), and elsewhere. She was awarded honorable mentions in the NFSPS Prouty Memorial Contest (2024) and the Fish Publishing Poetry Contest (2023). She served as the inaugural poet in residence at Unity Farm Sanctuary.

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​Recent interview in the Phi Beta Kappa Key