Books of Poetry
All In Measure: A Book of Hours
Published January 2023 by Blue Light Press
“I dog-eared the poems I liked best and found that there were so many that I ignored my dog’s ears.” -Barry Goldensohn, Author of The Hundred Yard Dash Man and Visitor’s Entrance
Cloudbreak
Published May 2021 by Poetic Matrix Press
“Heather Estes has created an intricate portrait of place quite separate from the version that appears in popular fiction.” -Kim Shuck, Poet Laureate of San Francisco
Inner Sunset
Published May 2019 by Blue Light Press
“As natural historian, writing of contemporary life in San Francisco, Estes appreciates the ‘seal heads of surfers,’ … I admire the wisdom in ‘what they do now can never be undone,’ even as the speaker finds comfort in ‘plover hieroglyphs.’” -Robin Becker, Author of The Black Bear Inside Me
Anthologies
Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice
Edited by Carol Lynne Knight and Kristine Snodgrass, Published in 2022 by Anhinga Press
Rumors, Secrets, & Lies is a collection of narrative poems, prose poems, flash fiction — stories about abortions, unplanned pregnancies and joyous births. 116 writers, including Naomi Shihab Nye, Ellen Bass, and Alicia Ostriker, write from experience.
Fog and Light: San Francisco Through the Eyes of Poets Who Live Here
Edited by Diane Frank, Published March 2021 by Blue Light Press
This love-letter-to-the-city anthology includes four of my poems, (“Sing-Along Messiah”, “Tree #143”, “Mount Sutro Tower”, and “San Francisco, 14th Avenue”), and was reviewed in depth in the online journal London Grip
The Sky Away From Here
Chapbook of Poems from the Blue Light Press Summer 2019 Workshop
Bach in the Afternoon
Chapbook of Poems from the Blue Light Press Summer 2018 Workshop
Individual Poems
2019
“Thunder In the Blood” was published in the Fall 2019 edition of Vistas and Byways, the literature review by members of the San Francisco State OLLI program:
“This frank poem describes how the author overcame inhibition and embarrassment over body image and reclaimed the joy of dancing after a twenty year hiatus.”
2018
“A Bonsai Tree Grows Out Of My Body”
Redheaded Stepchild, Winter 2018
“There Is A Bison In The Front Yard”
Weekly Avocet #315, December 2018
“Cicada Shells on the Trunks of Silver Maples”
These Fragile Lilacs Vol IV i , Fall 2018
“Scent of Wet Words”
Vistas and Byways, Spring 2018
“Struck By Lightning, Or Not”
Vistas and Byways, Summer 2018
“Like the Back of My Hand”
The Pangolin Review, Spring 2018
“Double Suns”
Plum Tree Tavern, April 4th 2018
“Make A Way If There Isn’t One”
Burning House Press, April 22nd 2018
“The First Day of Summer”
Sisyphus Journal, Issue 4.4: Healing Issue, Winter 2017-2018
2017
“Bread” and “Cans of Baked Beans”
Brine, Issue #1, 2017
The Pickling Poets uniquely offers real jams and pickles along with poetry published by their literary journal Brine.
Heather Saunders Estes 