The Poet

Neal Hall, M.D.

Hall is a trained medical-surgical eye physician and graduate of Cornell and Harvard Universities. An internationally acclaimed poet, he has composed poetry and performed readings throughout the U. S. and internationally to include: Kenya, Indonesia, France, Jamaica, Morocco, Canada, Nepal, Italy, Ghana, Japan, India and Germany.

Dr. Hall is an award-winning author of seven books of poetry:

• Nigger for Life– Grand Prize Winner – The Do – It -Yourself and The Los Angeles Book Awards
• Winter’s A’ Coming Still
• Where Do I Sit.
• Appalling Silence – Telugu and Urdu translations, published in India
• Weight of Just Black – Japanese translation, published Japan; nominated for Japan’s best translation;
• Door of No Return – Black Caucus of the American Library Association Winner
• The Trembling Tiber – a black poet’s muse on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – Eyelands International Winner

 
His work has been translated into seven languages: Telugu, Urdu, Bengali, Kannada, German, Italian and Spanish. Hall has created a CD of poetry readings titled: 911- 24/7.

Hall’s poetry speaks not just to the surface pain of injustice and inhumanity but deep into that pain, we label and package into genteel socio-political-economic-religious constructs to blur the common lines of cause, that is our shared story. A shared story that should unite us in a common struggle to be free.

Hall has been hailed “as the Malcolm X of International Poetry; a poet of intellectual passion and artistic significance whose poetry has consistently championed socio-economic and socio-political issues pertinent to social advocacy, of which we are a part, and of which poetry is pivotal.”

Cornel West said of Hall “ [he] is a warrior of the spirit, a warrior of the mind, an activist, a poet. I sense Dr. Hall’s hypersensitivity to suffering – Martin, Malcolm and Jesus all had this hypersensitivity. Both sides of his soul have prophetic leanings. His poetry has the capacity to change ordinary people’s philosophy on social and racial issues.”

Hall’s work informed and provided dialogue for the critically acclaimed Indian play – Beyond Borders. The all-female cast explored the boundaries of nationality, caste, color, ethnicity, gender, sexuality—walls men erect to garner socio-economic resources to ease their fears, insecurities, and hunger for power.

India’s Vasanth Kannabiran, Chairperson, Asmita Resource Centre for Women, remarked: ‘This is poetry that scalds you into waking up to the possibility that you are perhaps one of those silent spectators. All in all he is a poet. And unquestionably one of the most significant voices of the century.”