Shamar Hill

Writing

Two books in progress, along with poems, essays, and criticism in journals and magazines.

Memoir, in progress

In Defiance of All True Things

A memoir tracing three generations of fatherhood, identity, faith, and inheritance, from a Brooklyn studio apartment to the questions a son carries into his own life as a father.

[A SECOND PARAGRAPH: WHAT THE BOOK ASKS, OR A SHORT PASSAGE FROM IT]

For agent and editor inquiries, see Contact.

Poetry, in progress

Photographs of an Imagined Childhood

A collection that includes the turnaround, a form of his own that sets the biblical psalms beside early blues recordings and lets each answer the other. The name comes from the blues turnaround and from teshuvah, the turning back.

[A SAMPLE POEM OR SHORT EXCERPT, IF YOU WANT ONE HERE]

Poems

Selected journal publications.

  • American Poetry Review“The Walls Became the World All Around,” “When the Stillness Comes”Vol. 50, No. 3
  • Day One“How My Father Tells Time”Little A, Issue 4.29, 2017
  • The Missouri Review“We have traversed the blue sky,” “Bus Shelters Are Graveyards”Poem of the Week, 2020
  • Plume“Of the Heart, A Hymn,” “Interracial love affair ended by lynching of a man,” “let there be a song for zero”Issue 117, May 2021
  • Poetry Northwest“Shadow Catcher,” “Anima & Shadow”Winter & Spring 2020
  • Southern Humanities Review“What is Built Has Always Ruptured”Vol. 50, Nos. 3 & 4
  • Tinderbox“Photographs of an Imagined Childhood,” “The Bathroom was the Only Room with a Door,” “The Islay Prophecy”Vol. 3, Issue 1
  • Vinyl“Laundry Quarters”
  • Washington Square Review“God of Ruin”Issue 41, Spring 2018

Essays and criticism