Atascadero native and current Winthrop University associate professor of creative writing Ephraim Scott Sommers begins his new poetry collection with an epigraph, a quote by French existential Albert Camus: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
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It’s an apt quote for poems exploring a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes, an incurable autoimmune disease requiring lifelong insulin therapy. Like Sisyphus, diabetics endure an endless exercise in managing their illness. One may find it difficult to imagine Sisyphus as anything but miserable.
Sommers—whose parents, aunts, and uncles still live in Atascadero—was frontman in the popular local band Siko, and published his first poetry collection, The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire, about his formative Atascadero years. It received the 2016 Patricia Bibby First Book Award. In Diabetic Gumdrops, he turns his creativity on his devastating June 2024 diagnosis, writing the collection in the first six months of discovering his illness.
“I think I needed a place to put all those difficult feelings, and I’ve been blessed to have studied poetry for so long, so I didn’t have to learn or stumble through those things,” Sommers explained by phone. “I had the capacity to use that art as a way to address all that, the difficult experience, and try to make something of it and lean on gratitude as a way out of how difficult it was to get a diagnosis like that.”
For the rest of his life, Sommers will give himself insulin shots every day at meals and take long-acting insulin at night “to stay regulated basically.” He also has some “heart issues” and “blood issues” as “a result of the autoimmune aspect of diabetes.”
Even though the collection is about diabetes, he hasn’t forgotten his roots. Local places and his A-Town upbringing always seem to turn up.
“Yeah, man, that city, that town,” he laughed. “I’m actually working on a memoir about that because it just affected me so deeply, all of the aspects of art making, of building a community, that community back in the day when I was there playing with Siko and there was all those great bands, Rain for Rent, Double Metro, Too Much or Too Little, Glider, Criticnue—all those bands—there was such a great original music scene.”
It was a time of artistic camaraderie that has stuck with him.
“All of us were hanging out together and trying to do the good work of making original art and cheering each other on and going to each other’s shows. I’ve taken that lesson with me everywhere. You need a community, to support and learn from other artists. All that stuff is deeply embedded within my psyche and my art making. I’ve tried to leave it behind. I always say, ‘This song that I write is going to be the goodbye song, the breakup song to Atascadero and SLO County,’ but it never happens. I always continue to think about it and ask questions about it, because I’m so grateful for that experience.”
Despite his busy teaching career, Sommers continues to do “the singer-songwriter thing,” playing about 170 shows a year around the Carolinas.
“I just put out a record last year called Pine Mountain Dirt, and I’m working on a new one now.”
Diabetic Gumdrops can be a very heart-wrenching read as Sommers describes the flood of feelings brought by his illness. With titles like “To Telling My Best Friend Two Weeks After Diagnosis Day,” “Ode to the First Night the Too-Low Happened,” “Ode to Spouses of Diabetics,” “Ode to the Phlebotomist at 2135 Holbrook Road,” and “Ode to How Difficult It Must Be for Doctors to Deliver Bad News,” Sommers explores multiple perspectives. The poems are also often funny and brimming with hope.
‘I think that I needed a place to put all those difficult feelings, and I’ve been blessed that I’ve been studying poetry for so long, so I didn’t have to learn or stumble through those things. I had the capacity to use that art as a way to address all that, the difficult experience, and try to make something of it and lean on gratitude as a way out of how difficult it was to get a diagnosis like that.’
—Ephraim Scott Sommers, poet
“I think joy and gratitude are a more entertaining way into poetry,” he said. “I didn’t have any hope when I started writing, when I first got all this information, and there’s an overwhelming amount of information, and the stakes are so high. It’s a really weird position for someone like me to be in who’s an academic and loves to read and loves exercising that intellectual part of my brain.
“Now here’s something that deeply affects me that I’m absolutely ignorant about. That’s a scary situation, so I’m hammering doctors, yelling at pharmacists, confronting all the medical capitalist things that are happening. You’ve got to fight for your own health, talk to insurance people, make all these calls, get your prescriptions. All that messy, jumbled-up ridiculousness of having a chronic illness in America in 2026. I want people to leave the book understanding a little bit more about what’s that like.”
Ode on Returning to a California Beach After Twelve Years
you can say fuck you to all the old poets
and critics and editors and teachers and deans and magazines and presses
and forget anything they’ve taught you
about what poetry’s tongue is supposed to taste like
fuck Baraka (he’d laugh at this)
a poem is not a hike
fuck Robert Lowell fuck poems about student loans fuck all the poached poetry quotes
on Instagram and fuck being a poetry professor especially too
you should get yourself soaking and salty today instead
you should stop here in your silver running shoes
for however long it takes
and stare in awe and hallelujah
at how the whole Pacific Ocean
and the whole North American continent come to an end right here
how they meet on this tiny and particular spot
on Hearst State Beach
for these sloppy smooches
Writing the collection also renewed his love of poetry.
“Something I discovered that I never would have thought is that I needed poetry more deeply than I thought. I’d been bummed on it because whenever you get deeper into any kind of art making, maybe you start to lose faith in it a bit or get upset with the state of poetry with a capital P in the academy. I think this helped me rediscover my love for making and writing poems and reading them as well.”
His poems are very accessible, entertaining, and compelling. Reading them is like riding on Sommers’ shoulder as he endures his struggle with empathy, wisdom, and heart.
“When I’m writing a poem, I don’t want to outsmart anyone. I’m not here to educate anyone. I just want to entertain. I want you to find the easiest way into it. It’s not a puzzle,” he said. “I want to connect with you, connect my experience with yours, and if you can find something in there that you connect with, I’m so appreciative and grateful that someone would take the time to look at it and read and hope to understand.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in June 25 – July 2, 2026.
