Biography of
Sylvia Byrne Pollack

Sylvia Byrne Pollack was raised in a music-loving family in Batavia, NY. In the wake of Sputnik, she chose to study science. She earned a B.A. in Zoology from Syracuse University, a Ph.D in Developmental Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and a M.A. in psychology from Antioch University-Seattle. She is Research Professor Emeritus after a long career in cancer research at the University of Washington. Following a trip to Antarctica in 2007, Sylvia began to focus on poetry. Her poems appear in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, Clover, and Antiphon among other print and online journals. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, won the 2013 Mason's Road Winter Literary Award,

“It’s been clear that if I want to be of service, one way I can do that is to use my poetry to talk about these issues and to, hopefully, pull back the curtain for other people so that they can see what it might be like to experience some of these things.” - Sylvia

Sylvia has a collection of soubriquets acquired over the decades, including professor, cancer researcher, mental health counselor, lesbian, Jew, flutist, world traveler. Among her favorites are Mom, Nana, wife, poet.

A two-time Pushcart nominee

2021 Mineral School residency

2019 Jack Straw Writer

2018 Overheard: The Deaf Woman Poems, chapbook manuscript, was a finalist for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and received Honorable Mention for the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Contest.

2014 Medalist for the inaugural Russell Prize.

2013 Mason’s Road Winter Literary Award

At age 80, Sylvia Byrne Pollack of Seattle will publish her first book of poetry

By Sarah Neilson Special to The Seattle Times

Sylvia Byrne Pollack has always been a writer.

The Seattle poet and scientist knows the stuff that poetry is made of: an adventurous, multifaceted life. When National Poetry Month begins April 1, her new book, “Risking It,” will be released by Red Mountain Press. It’s the 80-year-old’s first published book.

“This world is experienced in so many different ways and there’s not one right way,” Pollack says as we speak over Zoom on a sunny spring afternoon. “There’s not one way to be in the world and there’s not one way to write about the world.”

Pollack was raised in Batavia, New York, about 30 miles inland from Lake Ontario, between Buffalo and Rochester. Her father was a nationally renowned high school chemistry teacher and musician, and Sylvia was inspired by both subjects.

Her poetry, and Pollack’s life’s work, reflect an embrace of science and art together.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Syracuse University, a doctorate in developmental biology from the University of Pennsylvania, and at the age of 26, she moved to Seattle, where she earned her master’s in psychology from Antioch University Seattle. After a long career in cancer research, she was named research professor emeritus at the University of Washington.

“Like many people, I loved to write when I was little. I read a lot, so I wrote,” Pollack says. Much of her early written work was journalism; she was the editor of her high school paper and a stringer for the local newspaper. Her varied careers didn’t involve a lot of creative writing over the years, “but always in the back of my mind, I wanted to write,” she says.

Through it all, Pollack experienced her own cancer, mental illness and hearing loss, as well as extensive travel, motherhood and love. But it was in 2007, when she and her wife took a trip to Antarctica, that poetry resurfaced more strongly into her life.

In Antarctica, they were on a ship that got caught in a hurricane. The experience appears in poetry form in “Risking It.”

“During the hurricane, I made a vow to myself to do a number of things, one of which was to start writing again,” Pollack says.

Upon returning to Seattle, she joined a writing group with local writer Peggy Sturdivant, and began to help build, and be folded into, the local poetry community — a community that Pollack calls invaluable. In 2019, Pollack was named a Jack Straw Writer, and she began to work on her manuscript in earnest while in the writing program.

Pollack’s poems are beautifully evocative of place and emotion. They’re tinged with humor, and they include characters, or personas, through which she explores mental illness and hearing loss.

Letitia, one of Pollack’s characters, who has bipolar disorder, and The Deaf Woman, a character who has hearing loss, serve as engaging figures of semi-autobiographical stories. “The persona is a wonderful way in which you can project and present a lot of things,” Pollack says. “It gives you the freedom of a novelist, to make up a character and give them all kinds of things — some of which may be from your life, and some which may not be.”

In a poem titled “Silence,” Pollack writes, “From silence     everything.” The idea of silence and nonverbal communication is a strong theme that frames what it means to exist in a world — internally and externally — where language is both vital and limiting.

“One of the experiences I had that has always really stuck with me,” Pollack says, “was when a good friend said, ‘Let’s go take a walk on the beach.’” Usually they talked when they walked, but that day, Pollack recounts, “She said, ‘Let’s not talk today.’ And it was such a powerful bonding moment, that afternoon of walking in silence. It taught me something important: that I didn’t have to be filling in the silence all the time. That silence is important, and things will come out of it.

“Part of the magic of poetry is that, when you write the words, you’re a writer,” Pollack continues. “And once you put them down, they’re not really yours anymore. The reader has to do the other half of the work.”

Pollack says that’s part of why she’s so enamored by poetry.

“I suppose this is true with poetry particularly, because it’s much more compressed. You need to spend time with it and let the words soak in. I think many poets have had the experience of writing something, and only later do you realize that it has layers you didn’t even recognize. So that’s one of the things I love about poetry, is that it’s so multilayered.”