A poet whose work reveals many personal experiences told students on Feb. 13 the reason to write poems is to express emotions.

“Taking … the emotions, or the really terrible thoughts … and putting it somewhere else,” James Allen Hall, who spoke at an AACC Writers Reading event, said, “not just putting it somewhere else, but like making lines and making forms, and cutting and shaping, molding it right.”

Still, Hall, who published a collection of poems in the 2023 book “Romantic Comedy,” said the journey toward publication is not always easy for queer artists.

Hall, who described the novel as “a masterpiece of queer self-creation,” expressed no shame about writing about personal subjects.

“I try to overthrow the shame that living in [a] cis/hetero patriarchy gives us,” Hall said. “And so I write for that.”

Hall admitted to having doubts all the time about the publication process.

“All the time. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow,” Hall said. “That’s again, that’s your silence telling you [to] shut up.”

Queer history, Hall said, has been “kind of forgotten.”

“How do you know if it exists if it’s not valued enough to be put on the syllabus?” Hall asked. “You’re graduating with a bookshelf that’s not full.”

Creative writing professor Garrett Brown, who organized the event, said he invites a different writer to speak to students every month.

“This is [students’] first time being at an event like this, where they can listen to a writer,” Brown said. “They can ask questions, they can interact … it is a valuable educational experience.”

Students who attended the event agreed.

“I loved this experience, honestly,” William Finn, a first-year undecided student, said. “I think that the speaker was phenomenal. I think that this really connected with me … as a queer person.”

Anne-Keren Kante, a second-year biology student, said she enjoys coming to events like these.

“You can make new friends and you can participate,” Kante said. “You can have fun.”
The next Writers Reading will be on March 12 in Humanities 112.