Sara Slingerland Sheiner is a poet from Shawangunk, New York. Her first manuscript about the interplay of individual and collective grief (originally titled Of Lack now renamed The Shroud) has been chosen as a finalist in the 2026 National Poetry Series Open Competition, honorable mention in Seneca Review’s 2024 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize, a runner-up for Tupelo’s 2021 Berkshire Prize, judged by Victoria Chang, a finalist in the 2020 Essay Press Book Contest, judged by Renee Gladman, and a semi-finalist in the 2020 + 2022 Wisconsin Poetry Series' prizes.
Her second manuscript about ancestral forgetting and remembering is a book-length poem, what she calls a 'contraepic,' titled The Field. She has a doctorate in the literary arts from the University of Denver, a master’s degree in creative writing from Virginia Tech, & was the poet-in-residence at Randolph College in 2017.
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If you’re here because you’re curious about my divination practices. Hello—my name is Sara.
I was led to study tarot and astrology by way of my love for nature and poetry. Thus, I have named my divination practice "The Divine Field".
You might be asking, why a field specifically?
Though a field may look like just a bunch of grass, when we stand at its periphery, there is—at least for me— something about a field that vibrates with so much more.
Similarly, when we look up at the night sky, perhaps still at the periphery of that more-than-field, far from city lights, it might seem like just a bunch of stars but again there is something more there. (And I don’t mean aliens.)
Just like these, a poem is alive with something beyond its words and imagery. With all of its techniques that try to describe the beauty and divinity of life, the natural world, and its intelligence.
Like that, astrology, and its techniques, attempts to describe the beauty, divinity, and intelligence of the cosmos.
And together these two—poetry and astrology—reflect each other and speak to each other and their pursuit is the same: to understand why we are here and how we are all connected and what we are supposed to do with this brief, precious life.
Within our sensations and our experiences, we can sense what’s right there, waiting to be understood, felt, communicated—if only for a short time or only in brief moments.
I love and practice divination for the same reasons that I love and practice poetry. Because I feel the strange aliveness of existence in all of its pain and beauty and love and awe and quiet and everything, the kaleidoscope of experience.
I began my study of astrology in earnest in 2020. First, I endeavored to teach myself by listening to The Astrology Podcast, Ghost of a Podcast, and the Magic of the Spheres podcasts supplemented by attendance at the Denver Astrology Meetup and with various courses and presentations from Alice Sparkly Kat, Blair Bogan, Laura Nalbandian, Diana Rose Harper, and others.
In 2023, after discovering Adam Elenbaas's podcast and his emphasis on astrology-as-divination, I joined Nightlight Astrology’s 27th cohort and have since completed the Year 1 course and certification, the Year 2 course (certification hopefully to come), Horary, and Year 3. I cannot recommend Adam's classes highly enough.
You can explore my one-on-one offerings here.
Thank you for reading.
