Poems About Sorrento, Louisiana
Original poetry about Sorrento, Louisiana by Mitchell Parfait : the crawfish capital of the world, Ascension Parish, the earthen-bermed ponds and the flat-bottomed boats running at first light on the I-10 corridor.
By Mitchell Parfait · Dulac, Louisiana · October 24, 2025 · 8 min read · Sorrento & Ascension Parish
The interstate runs overhead and the crawfish pots steam below it. This is not a contradiction.
Sorrento, Louisiana: The Crawfish Capital of the World
Sorrento, Louisiana sits in Ascension Parish along the I-10 corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and its identity is specific and working: the crawfish capital of the world. Not just a festival claim but an actual designation rooted in the aquaculture that surrounds the town. The prairies and swamps east of Sorrento are lined with earthen-bermed ponds, and in season the crawfish boats run at first light through the flat shallow water, pulling the traps before the fog burns off the fields.
Sorrento is not a tourist stop on the way between the two cities. It is a working town in les boues: the pond country, the soft wet ground where Ascension Parish's crawfish aquaculture has built its economy over generations. The industry is real and physical. The boats are flat-bottomed. The traps are wire. The catch is sorted on the berm in the morning cold and driven to the processing sheds before the day gets much older.
Mitchell Parfait grew up in Dulac, Louisiana, at the southern end of the bayou corridor, where the water meets the Gulf and the land runs out into the marsh. The crawfish country of Ascension Parish is inland from his territory but feeds the same Gulf Coast food economy. The Sorrento poem in Dulac Poetry moves through the same working-water tradition as the rest of the book: specific, seasonal, observed without sentiment.
Life in Sorrento: The Ponds, the Processing Sheds, and the Low Ground
The crawfish aquaculture east of Sorrento runs on a rhythm that the town has followed for decades. The earthen berms separate the ponds. The flat-bottomed boats, propeller-jet driven, move through shallow muddy water at first light while the rest of the parish is still asleep. The traps surface dripping, sorted by hand on the berm before the sun is fully up. Sorrento is not just the farming town: it is the processing center, the place where the catch from St. Amant and the surrounding communities comes in to be peeled and boiled and packed for the market. The peeling tables and the boiling pots are part of the town's daily working life, not just the festival season.
The I-10 overpass is visible from the ponds. The highway runs over the top of what is still farm country: the corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans cutting through the flat delta soil, the same black earth that holds crawfish ponds on one side of the road and sugar cane fields on the other. Sorrento is not just a crawfish town. Sugar cane grows here too, the same alluvial soil serving both industries across the seasons. The cane harvest and the crawfish season follow the same Catholic calendar that structures life in Ascension Parish: the church socials, the fish fries during Lent, the crawfish boil as the religious-season food of bayou country.
The low ground has its costs. Sorrento flooded in Hurricane Gustav, flooded again in Ida, flooded in the 2016 Louisiana floods that carried no storm name but brought catastrophic rainfall across the region over three days in August. The families here know what it means to work the same ground their grandparents worked, to rebuild on it after the water recedes, to come back to the same ponds and the same berms and start the traps running again. This is the working life that Mitchell Parfait's poetry documents from its own angle in Terrebonne Parish: the knowledge that the water is both the source and the risk, and that the people who live here have always understood both things at once.
Featured Poem: Sorrento
In Mitchell Parfait's voice: the flat-bottomed boat on the pond before the fog lifts, the traps coming up from the muddy water, the catch sorted on the berm, the drive to the processing shed, the boiling pot at the church social, the I-10 overpass visible from the field, the sugar cane on the far side of the road. He writes from Dulac, Louisiana, at the other end of the economy this place feeds.
Sorrento
The traps come up before the fog burns off.
The boat moves flat through shallow water,
the propeller jet pushing a wake
across the pond's surface
in the first gray light.
Each trap surfacing the same way:
the wire cage, the muddy water
pouring back through the mesh,
the catch inside still moving.
The man sorting on the berm
does not look up.
He knows what he has by the weight,
by the sound they make against each other,
by the way the good ones move.
They load the truck at the edge of the pond.
The processing shed is ten minutes down the road.
The peeling tables are already set up.
The boiling pots will go on at noon
for the church social.
St. Amant sends its catch here too.
The whole parish feeds into this shed,
this town, these tables.
On the far side of the road
the sugar cane stands in rows,
the same black soil holding it
that holds the berms between the ponds.
This ground does two things at once
and always has.
The water has come before.
Gustav, Ida, the August of 2016
when there was no storm name
and the rain came anyway
for three days without stopping.
The berms held or they did not.
The families came back either way.
The interstate runs overhead
and the crawfish pots steam below it.
This is not a contradiction.
The poem opens on the boat before the fog burns off, the trap wire coming up through muddy water, the catch still moving inside the cage. It moves through the berm sorting, the truck to the processing shed, the boiling pots going on at noon for the church social. The sugar cane visible on the far side of the road, the same soil serving both. The flood years named plainly: Gustav, Ida, the 2016 August rain that had no storm name. The families who came back. And the close that holds the whole town in one image: the overpass above, the pots steaming below, two Louisiana things that were never in conflict.
Mitchell Parfait, Dulac Poetry, and the Crawfish Economy of the Gulf Coast
Sorrento is inland from Dulac, but the two places are connected by the same economy. The crawfish that come up from Ascension Parish ponds travel south along the Gulf Coast corridor to the communities closer to the water: the bayou towns, the fishing villages, the places where the Gulf Coast table is set with whatever came in that week from the traps and the trawls and the nets. The trade runs both ways. Ascension Parish feeds the coast; the coast sends its culture back up the bayou road in the food and the faith and the way people talk about the water.
Mitchell Parfait's Dulac Poetry lives in the same working-water tradition as the Sorrento poem: the specific detail that holds a place, the craft of the seasonal worker, the image that does the work without commentary. The book is written from Dulac, Louisiana, at the southern end of the bayou corridor, where the water meets the Gulf and the land runs out. But the economy Parfait documents reaches north into Ascension Parish, into the crawfish ponds east of Sorrento, into the processing sheds and the boiling pots and the church socials that mark the calendar of Lent in bayou country.
The paperback is $12.99 on Amazon. The Kindle edition is $3.99. The poems are for everyone who knows what the working water means from either end of the corridor: the pond farmer pulling traps at first light in Ascension Parish, or the shrimper running the trawl in Terrebonne Parish before the sun is up. The same attention to craft. The same season. The specific detail that holds a place.
From the bayou. By Mitchell Parfait.
DULAC POETRY — Available on Amazon
Order Dulac Poetry on Amazon
Sorrento is where the crawfish come from. Dulac is where they end up on the table, pulled from the Gulf-fed bayous, cooked at the family camp or the church social or the dock at the end of a long day on the water. Mitchell Parfait writes from the water's edge: the book is for everyone who knows what that means, whether you know it from the bermed ponds of Ascension Parish or the bayou camps of Terrebonne Parish or the Gulf Coast table you grew up sitting at.
DULAC POETRY by Mitchell Parfait. Paperback ($12.99) and Kindle ($3.99) on Amazon. Poetry from the working Gulf Coast, from the earthen-bermed ponds of Sorrento to the bayou towns south of Dulac, from the crawfish trap to the shrimp trawl, from the I-10 overpass to the edge of the Gulf.
Find more poems about Louisiana's waterways and towns at Gonzales, Donaldsonville, Southwest Pass, South Pass, and Head of Passes. Read about the book on the book page or learn about Mitchell Parfait.
Poems from Sorrento, Louisiana: the crawfish capital of the world, Ascension Parish on the I-10 corridor. The earthen-bermed ponds, the flat-bottomed boats at first light, the processing sheds, the boiling pots at the church social. By Mitchell Parfait from Dulac, Louisiana, the other end of the crawfish economy where the water meets the Gulf.
Poetry From the Crawfish Capital and the Gulf Coast Bayou Country
The traps come up before the fog burns off. The flat-bottomed boat on the pond at first light. The I-10 corridor between two cities, cutting through what is still farm country.
Mitchell Parfait writes from Dulac, Louisiana: the other end of the corridor, where the bayou meets the Gulf and the crawfish from Sorrento ends up on the table. His book DULAC POETRY is available now on Amazon in paperback ($12.99) and Kindle ($3.99).
Written from the Louisiana Gulf Coast waterways by Mitchell Parfait.