Elizabeth Bradfield’s SOFAR Explores the Currents That Carry Us All

In her newest book of poetry, SOFAR, Western Colorado University’s Elizabeth Bradfield turns her attention to the ecological and historical moment we live in through a collection of poems that reflect on a life lived – fully and unflinchingly – by the sea.

Blending the experience of decades spent working with boats in an inescapable environment, with “a new understanding of how time and memory flow through a life, particularly the life of a queer woman in a decades-long relationship whose body and mind are weathering a sea change,” Bradfield said poems in the collection developed “slowly, organically from experiences and questions that crossed my path over the last ten years of my life and work on Cape Cod.”

The title itself is a nod to the themes that started to emerge from the collection. SOFAR is an acronym for the “sound frequency and ranging channel,” a layer of water in the ocean that allows sound to travel vast distances. Bradfield says she’s fascinated by sound in the ocean and realized that “listening was the book’s through line — to other people, to the more-than-human world, to my own past.”

As a result, readers can expect to hear a different kind of connection to life on this planet in her words and find an intimacy that can only be gained through keen observation and deep relationships.

Bradfield is the author of five previous books, including Toward Antarctica and Approaching Ice. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Orion, and The Sun, with honors including the Audre Lorde Prize from the Publishing Triangle, recognition as a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and fellowships from the Stegner and Bread Loaf programs.

In addition to her work as a poet, Bradfield is the founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided, continues to work as a naturalist and field assistant from Cape Cod to the polar seas, and is director of the Poetry Concentration in Western’s Graduate Program for Creative Writing.

SOFAR can be found at your local independent bookstore, Bookshop.org, or anywhere books are sold. To learn more about Elizabeth Bradfield and her work, visit ebradfield.com.