Background
Mr. Hamer was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, United States, on August 31, 1956. He is a son of Forrest T. (in the military) and Bertha (a school administrator; maiden name, Barnes) Hamer.
(Rift, the third collection from poet and psychologist For...)
Rift, the third collection from poet and psychologist Forrest Hamer, engages hauntingly with separations and reconciliations that are both personal and socio-historical. Hamer draws on his American experience—including his youth in Goldsboro, North Carolina—and his African heritage—including the tragic conflicts between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda—to investigate memories, stories, and the way in which a poem is a “hopeful body.” Yusef Kumunyakaa has described Hamer’s poems as “calls into our modern wilderness that demand heartfelt responses,” and Al Young compares them to “a Robert Johnson blues or a Thelonious Monk ballad; [they] linger in the blood long after they enter the inner eye and ear.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1884800750/?tag=2022091-20
("Forrest Hamer's poems rise out of the places where relig...)
"Forrest Hamer's poems rise out of the places where religion and dancing-- spirit and body-- join, and in reading Call and Response 'We are journeying to the source of all wonder,/ We journey by dance. Amen.' Amen! We call in celebration. Amen!" --Andrew Hudgins "Forrest Hamer's poems rise out of the places where religion and dancing-- spirit and body-- join, and in reading Call and Response 'We are journeying to the source of all wonder,/ We journey by dance. Amen.' Amen! We call in celebration. Amen!" --Andrew Hudgins
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1882295064/?tag=2022091-20
(Poetry. African American Studies. Forrest Hamer's first b...)
Poetry. African American Studies. Forrest Hamer's first book, CALL & RESPONSE (Alice James, 1995; also available) won the Beatrice Hawley Award. Now, his newest book is the seventh selection in the new California Poetry Series. These poems speak from Hamer's memories of his Southern childhood, weaving that time into the daily dreams and insights of his life in northern California in a continuing series of vignettes. 'A man writes his dark body,' one poem tells us, and in fact this book inscribes exactly that: a full, breathing voice, muscular intelligence working in language that both startles and satisfies --Mark Doty.
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(The South: to render all that it means to an African Amer...)
The South: to render all that it means to an African American takes someone with acutely tuned senses, someone with a patience, a passion even, for the region's history and contradictions. It takes a poet. In this new anthology, the first of its kind, more than one hundred contemporary black poets laugh at and cry about, pray for and curse, flee and return to―the South. Voices new to the scene appear in The Ringing Ear alongside some of the leading names in American literature today, including Sonia Sanchez, Yusef Komunyakaa, Harryette Mullen, Nikki Giovanni, Kevin Young, Cornelius Eady, and Al Young. The southern worlds opened up by these poets are echoed in how their poems are grouped, under headings like "Music, Food, and Work: Heeding the Lamentation and Roar of Things Made by Hand," or "Religion and Nature: The Lord Looks Out for Babies and Fools," or "Love, Flesh, and Family: The Hush and Holler Portraits." "Not all of us on these pages have come to or from the South by the same dirt road," says anthology editor Nikky Finney. "We have not chosen our dark olive words from the same patch of earth. Some have come by way of birth and others have followed street musicians and urban corner preachers, dream and myth, to stand before its pine and iron gates."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820329266/?tag=2022091-20
Mr. Hamer was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, United States, on August 31, 1956. He is a son of Forrest T. (in the military) and Bertha (a school administrator; maiden name, Barnes) Hamer.
Forrest Hamer graduated from Yale University, obtaining her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978. In 1987 he graduated from University of California, Berkeley, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy.
Mr. Hamer served as a psychologist in Oakland, CA. Since 1988 he held the post of a lecturer at University California, Berkeley. His works have appeared in many journals including the Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, Berkeley Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Drumming Between Us, Equinox, Kenyon Review, Negative Capability.
He lives in Oakland, California.
("Forrest Hamer's poems rise out of the places where relig...)
(The South: to render all that it means to an African Amer...)
(Rift, the third collection from poet and psychologist For...)
(Poetry. African American Studies. Forrest Hamer's first b...)
Quotations: Forrest Hamer told CA: "Call and Response is a book about passage, particularly passage into one’s voice. In the process of discovering my own voice, I became impressed with the large number and variety of voices I heard within it."
