Washington state poet laureate Derek Sheffield turns to natural world for inspiration

“Fur-fat and stock-still in the trail / they appear to be looking / into a mythic sky …”

If you’re from the Northwest, you have a pretty fair shot at guessing which creature these lines describe. But just in case, here’s another hint.

“Upright on boulders, they are ready / to tumble at the shrill signal / if we become, in a blink, / by sneeze or shuffle, believable.”

This is a poem about the hoary marmot, titled, “How We Look,” written by Washington’s newest poet laureate, Derek Sheffield.

Marmots aren’t the only local wildlife Sheffield has written about. “I am as much a naturalist as I am a poet,” said Sheffield in the ArtsWA (the Washington State Arts Commission) news release announcing him as the 2025-27 Washington state poet laureate. ArtsWA, alongside Humanities Washington, sponsor the state’s poet laureate program.

The role of the poet laureate is to host readings, presentations and workshops across Washington and promote poetry appreciation throughout local communities. Each poet laureate takes unique goals and perspectives into their work over the three year term.

“I guess you could use three words to talk about my work for the next three years with people in Washington state, especially young people and fostering, nurturing their mental health, you could sum it up in words, woods, and wellness. Words, woods and wellness is what I’m after,” Sheffield said.

Much of Sheffield’s work draws from his passion for connection with the natural world, not only as a reprieve from the hustle and disillusionment of the modern digital age, but also as a wellspring of inspiration.

“It’s quiet. I can be still. And because it’s quiet outside, the inside can be turned up,” Sheffield said.

As a child, Sheffield chewed through a lot of books, mostly science fiction and fantasy from the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin and Edgar Rice Burroughs. He knew from a young age that he wanted to either own a bookstore or be a novelist. But when he was 16, a creative writing class came along to upend his expectations and turn him towards poetry.

“When I thought about being a novelist, it was about making those worlds that had helped me survive middle school, and my parent’s divorce and their absence. And then when I shifted gears into poetry, it was no longer about escape, but it was about wrangling reality and going deeper into what my life was giving me,” Sheffield said. “It was about confronting reality, interrogating reality, going deeper into it and learning more about it.”

Sheffield has continued to explore the intersection of poetry and nature throughout his career, including in his teaching curriculum.

“This is work I’ve been doing here at Wenatchee Valley College for the last 20 years in combining the study of writing with the study of ecology in a class called Northwest Nature Writing, a learning community team taught by a biologist and a writer. This work came to fruition in the book ‘Cascadia Field Guide’ that just came out last year,” he said.

“Cascadia Field Guide” was the winner of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award and was a 2024 Washington State Book Award Finalist in Poetry. It was edited by Sheffield and fellow writers and naturalists Elizabeth Bradfield and CMarie Fuhrman, and it brings together ecological education, visual art and poetry to provide its readers a full experience for the mind and the soul.

“Science deals with what and sometimes how, but the humanities addresses the why of things. And as it does that, it speaks to our bodies and to our hearts, if you want to think about it in those terms, instead of our intellect,” Sheffield said.

And although he considers himself “a total science geek,” Sheffield’s primary mission is to invite others to explore not just what they observe, but also what they feel.

“We need humanities and art that reawakens that wonder, now more than ever. Because we won’t make any changes for something that we don’t know and that we don’t love,” Sheffield said. “If we can evoke the living world in our work, then maybe we’ll remember we’re a part of it. And what we do to it, we do to ourselves.”

It isn’t just what we can do for nature that Sheffield emphasizes, but also what nature and creating art about it can do for us.

“Slow down, shut up, and be present. These are the things that poetry makes me do,” Sheffield said. “Silence and stillness. They open the doors so that wonder can be ignited.”

This is one of the lessons Sheffield aims to impart on his students at Wenatchee Valley. He sees the way digital life can negatively impact mental health, and he promotes the slowness of writing and creativity as one avenue for wellness.

“We start off every class with a free write assignment,” said student Joanna Bowman. “He’ll start by reading a poem or short story to us, and so then we kind of do our free write with that story kind of fresh in our minds. And I think it gives us the space to think critically about a work … I think that’s a really fun little practice that we do that’s quite also like a mindfulness exercise in a way.”

Student Lauren Bixby says she expected Sheffield to just provide a writing prompt in class, “But he actually makes it much broader than that, and usually the constraint of the stories we’ve written are often only the length.”

“He’ll tell us about his writing experiences, the people he’s met, and the people who have influenced him,” said student Anessa Hanson, “and I think that makes us more motivated to have those experiences.”

As for Liz Ray, she said Sheffield encourages students to write from their own person lives.

“(He) just allows us to have that space,” Ray said.