The Poet

Neal Hall is a 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, England, Indonesia, France, Jamaica, Morocco, Argentina, Canada, Nepal, Italy, Ghana, Japan, India and Germany.

Hall’s poetry speaks beyond the surface pain of injustice and inhumanity deep into that pain labeled and package into genteel socio-political-economic-religious constructs to hide the subjugator and subjugation and blur the common lines of cause, that is our shared story.  Hall’s pen inhales the air of opportunities for possibilities and possibilities for opportunities; challenging men’s hearts and minds to think, to rethink, to remember we are humanity with the capacity for unconditional love - still.

[Hall] 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 - Cornel West, PhD

I can certainly understand how you win so many awards. A modern-day TS Eliot, in my opinion. Really insightful and profound - Kristina Diener, PhD

I have spent some time with your 9/11 - 24/7 poems and then, as former English majors are wont to do, is at with paper and pen to “organize” (dare I say rank) them. Among my favorites, T. S. Elliot, Yeats, Langston Hughes (“Let America Be America Again”), Wallace Stevens, the WWI poets, et. al. I usually find some poems speak to me with a greater urgency, a sharper edge, a moment of honest insight and sometimes a great sadness. Your collection is consistent in message and insight and in each there was a phrase that stopped my white mind in its tracts.

A “straight drop” from the mountain top; “high on false hopes;” “Jeffersonian poker-faced democracy;” “gated heaven” and “I have given you my soul, leave me my name.” Also, “Enormous Weight of Hate,” “tolerable black with sugar,” “an air of arrogance always,” – these words catch you up; they haunt.

A Black poet steeped in the Black American experience writes in a manner that is so specific that, like a prism, shows us the colors of our humanity. James Baldwin did that. Ta-Nehisi Coates does that. Fine company you keep. Rob Lynch

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 - Vasanth Kannabiran, Writer, Chairperson, Culture Asmita Resource Centre for
Women, Nominated by India for the Nobel Peace Prize, Hyderabad, India

Hall has authored and published eight books. His work has been translated into eight languages: Telugu, Urdu, Bengali, Kannada, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Books

1. Winter’s A’ Coming Still
2. Nigger for Life - Grand Prize Winner: The Los Angeles Book Awards
3. Where Do I Sit
4. Appalling Silence - Telugu and Urdu translations, published in India
5. Door of No Return - Black Caucus of the American Library Association Poetry Book Winner
6. The Trembling Tiber - a black poet’s musing on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
   • Winner - Greece’s International Eyelands Award for best poetry book.
   • Invited Guest to Shakespeare’s 460^th Birthday Celebration & Luncheon, Stratford Upon Avon, England
   • Poetry Guest Recital: The Shakespeare Institute - Stratford Upon Avon – England, 2024
   • Poetry Guest Recital: The 996^th meeting of 1824 Shakespeare Club – Stratford Upon Avon – England, 2024
   • Installed the library -The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford Upon Avon, England
7. The Systems We Caste - Winner - India’s Wingword International Poetry Award; Published in India
8. Weight of Just Black – Japanese Translation, Publisher: Japan’s Sairytusha; nominated for Japan’s best translation

• Abolist © Project: an innovative mixed-media method providing readers/viewers a new powerful prism for accessing poetic messaging
• Jus Primae Noctus © an epic dramatic stage play adaptation from Hall’s award-winning book - The Trembling Tiber, a black poet’s musing on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
• The Unimaginable- what the musical Hamilton did not say about slavery in what it did say in the musical

• Bilingual (English & Spanish) - publication pending
• Italian translation of Hall's work, Rome Italy - publication pending
• Diary of the Heart (Romance) - publication pending
• Weapons of Mass Black Destruction - white hope, white faith, white divinities - publication pending

• Anne (Agnes) Hathaway Shakespeare – a poem commissioned by the first of its kind poetry book: The Anne-theology: Poems for Anne Hathaway . . . Shakespeare’s wife. Co-edited by Paul Edmondson, Aaron Kent, Prof. Chris Laoutaris and Katherine Scheil, Birmingham, England, Publisher: Broken Sleep Books, 2023. Selected by The Guardian & The Telegraph as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2023
• Essay - The Role of Dystopia in Preserving the Oneself – Publication: Living Dystopian: Post Millennial Perceptions and Post Pandemic Realities commissioned by The Inspirate Arts Foundation, Kolkata, India. Fourteen worldwide academics, writers and poets were invited to contribute. Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing - 2022
• Oneness, First Step - commissioned by the 2022 Annual Summit of The International African Brain Bank

The Stewardship Report http://www.stewardshipreport.com Oct 29th, 2015
Muse India- the literary e-journal, issues 62 Jul-Aug 2015; http://www.museindia.com/viewarticle.asp?myr=2015&issid=62&id=5909
Their Own Bare Hands, Bridgewater College International Poetry Festival Anthology, 2015
The Thinker - South Africa' s leading progressive social and political commentary magazine produced to feature world-wide thought leaders:

• Poems: Where Do I Sit. & Golf Ball White - Quarter 4, 2015, Vol. 66
• Poem: Nigger - Quarter 1, 2014, Vol. 59

Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World: A Review Journal: Volume 2; Issue 2; Winter/Spring 2011, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, Univ. of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Hiram Poetry Review, Issue 72, Spring 2011, Hiram College, Hiram Ohio

Nigger For Life Book:

John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, Cornell University
The James Weldon Johnson Collection, The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale Univ.
Poetry Library, London, UK
Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
Poets House, National Poetry Library and Literary Center, NY, NY
University of Guyana, Turkeyen Campus, Guyan
Black Writers Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Univ. of Manchester’s Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, Manchester, UK

The Trembling Tiber, a black poet’s musing on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Book:

The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford Upon Avon, England