Sasha Pearl is a multidisciplinary artist born in 1986 in Baltimore, Maryland, who creates poetry, visual art, and music from her home in the Hudson Valley. She gained recognition in 2022 when McSweeney’s Quarterly published her complete collection “Bus Poems I and II Plus,” written during lunch breaks while working as a school bus driver in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work transforms ordinary moments into art, drawing from her experiences as a tradesperson, farm worker, lighthouse keeper, and bus driver. As a working-class artist, she finds material in the routines most people overlook.
Who is Sasha Pearl
Sasha Pearl is a self-taught poet, visual artist, musician, and tradesperson whose work across multiple mediums centers on finding beauty and humor in everyday experiences. She grew up in the Hudson River Valley region of New York, where she continues to live and create today. This Hudson Valley poet has become part of the region’s creative community.
Her creative practice draws directly from her working life. Jobs including farm work, lighthouse keeping, film projection, and school bus driving appear throughout her poems, paintings, and music. This connection between labor and art defines her unique poetic voice. She describes herself on her Instagram profile as someone who makes “paintings, signs, poems, tour support, face painting, big soups,” showing her commitment to mixing creative work with everyday life. Unlike formally trained artists, her self-taught approach comes from direct experience rather than academic instruction.
Early Life and Background
Pearl was born in 1986 in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in the Hudson Valley. She currently resides in the Hudson River Valley region. Specific details about her childhood education and early artistic influences are not publicly documented.
What we know is that Pearl is entirely self-taught across all her creative disciplines. Her artistic development happened through community connections and direct experience rather than formal training. In interviews, she describes herself as someone who gets bored easily or likes to learn new things, depending on who you ask. This restless curiosity led her to take various jobs across different fields, each contributing to her creative output as both writer and visual artist.
Poetry and Bus Poems
Pearl’s poetry collection “Bus Poems I and II Plus” originated during her time as a school bus driver in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when she wrote poems during 45-minute staging periods between routes. McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern published the complete collection in Issue 67 in August 2022, with an introduction by author Samantha Hunt. This Bus Poems author became a recognized voice among McSweeney’s contributors.
She wrote the poems in parking lots while waiting between school runs, visiting either the Blake’s Lotta Burger lot or the Lobo Stadium lot. The poems capture small moments she observed while driving or waiting. Children’s questions, morning routines, traffic patterns, and other drivers all became material for her writing. Pearl explains that she finds ordinary things funny or full of unintended meaning, and that ideas for poems come from the outside when someone says or does something normal that resonates with her. Readers and reviewers have described her work as finding the extraordinary in everyday American experiences, comparing her to poets like William Carlos Williams who wrote about common life.
In 2025, Pearl published two new poems in Poetry Magazine’s July/August issue: “Deep Thoughts at Ulta Beauty” and “Trucking.” “Deep Thoughts at Ulta Beauty” explores consumer culture and human desire through a visit to a beauty store, mixing humor with social observation. This contemporary American poet continues to produce work that appears in major literary publications.
Writing Style and Themes
Pearl’s poems range from tiny haiku-length pieces to longer observations, all written under time constraints during her work breaks. Her observational style balances humor with tenderness. Reviewers note that she can be blunt and crass at times, bringing an honest approach to poetry about working life. The verses she crafts focus on precise details.
Themes include the microscopic details of daily life, the relationship between workers and time, observations of other people, and reflections on routine. One example she shared in an interview describes Mr. Toncho on bus number 135, who never responds when dispatchers call his name over the radio repeatedly, like an angry mother calling a child who leaves dirty socks on the kitchen table. These small, specific moments carry both humor and deeper human truths about work, communication, and relationships. Her approach as a blue-collar poet brings authenticity to themes of labor and ordinary experience.
Visual Art and Exhibitions
In 2022, Pearl exhibited paintings of neon sunset strip malls and signs in a two-person show at Monument Gallery in Kingston, New York. The exhibition was highly successful, with her collection of pop paintings selling out within minutes. Her work in the Hudson Valley arts community has gained regional recognition.
Her visual art focuses on everyday aesthetic elements most people pass without noticing. Strip mall neon signs, commercial signage, and sunset-lit suburban landscapes become subjects worth painting. The brushstrokes and color choices in these works mirror her poetry’s attention to overlooked details. The 2022 exhibition at Monument Gallery marked a breakthrough moment in her career as a visual artist. Like her poetry, the paintings celebrate the beauty hidden in ordinary American landscapes and commercial spaces.
Music and Performances
Pearl performs music as a “one lady band” based in Tivoli, New York. She released an album titled “U.S.S. Pearl” in 2010 through Secret Awesome Headquarters, featuring 13 tracks including songs like “The Wheel,” “Slingshot,” and “Walking the Floor Over You.” The surname Pearl, meaning precious gem, takes on an ironic quality when paired with her raw, unpolished musical style.
Her Bandcamp profile describes her sound as “Doc Watson and GG Allin had a baby in outer space that cries golden tears and poops sequins,” capturing the mix of folk tradition and weird humor in her music. The album contains strange, eerie, and humorous songs. She has performed locally in the Hudson Valley, sometimes accompanied by musician Willis Ross during poetry readings and art events. Her musical work shares the same interest in everyday life and humor that defines her poetry and paintings. As a grassroots artist, she builds her audience through local performances and community connections rather than major label support.
Work, Observation, and Creative Practice
Pearl’s creative work is directly informed by the various jobs she has held throughout her life. Her resume includes positions as a farm worker, lighthouse keeper, film projectionist, and school bus driver. Each job appears in her art, poetry, or music in some form. Her lighthouse keeper background represents one of the rare and unusual positions that inform her creative perspective.
This approach treats work and art as connected rather than separate. She explains that she is easily amused and finds that ordinary things are very funny or have unintended significance. Real life seems poetic or made-up to her, and she views truth as stranger than fiction. This philosophy of observation and attention allows her to create art directly from the circumstances of her working life rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. Her work across all mediums is fostered by community and informed by people and place. Each piece she creates, whether stanzas of poetry or visual compositions, emerges from this practice of careful watching.
Critical Reception
Pearl’s “Bus Poems” collection received praise from author Samantha Hunt, who wrote the introduction for the McSweeney’s publication and interviewed Pearl for The Millions in 2022. Hunt described Pearl’s tender observations and noted the might of the miniature in her tiny, time-constrained poems that achieve wholeness and largeness.
Readers on Goodreads have compared her work favorably to American Realist poetry, noting her ability to identify extraordinary elements within ordinary experiences. Some reviewers appreciate her honest, sometimes blunt approach to depicting working life. Upstate Films described 2022 as a breakthrough year for Pearl, with both her poetry publication and sold-out art exhibition marking her emergence as an important regional artist. As of October 2025, Poetry Foundation continues to feature her work on their website, including recent publications. Her association with both Poetry Foundation and Monument Gallery has established her credentials across multiple artistic disciplines.
Key Points About Sasha Pearl:
- She writes poetry drawn directly from her experiences working various blue-collar jobs, particularly as a school bus driver in Albuquerque where she composed poems during lunch breaks.
- Her 2022 publication in McSweeney’s Quarterly and sold-out painting exhibition at Monument Gallery marked her breakthrough as a recognized multidisciplinary artist.
- She creates across three main forms: poetry that captures everyday observations, paintings of commercial landscapes and neon signage, and music performed as a one-woman band.
- Her self-taught approach and working-class jobs inform all her creative output, treating labor and art as interconnected rather than separate pursuits.
- She continues publishing new work in major literary venues, with poems appearing in Poetry Magazine as recently as 2025, demonstrating her sustained relevance as a contemporary American poet.
