As part of our Horror Poetry Month series, we ask Bram Stoker Achievement in Poetry Finalist Jamal Hodge 13 questions.
Jamal Hodge is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated poet and multi-award-winning filmmaker, known for blending emotional depth with speculative themes. A member of the SFPA and HWA, he earned three Rhysling Award nominations, with his poem “Colony” placing 2nd in the 2022 Dwarf Stars—a historic achievement. His debut collection, The Dark Between the Twilight, and his anthology, Bestiary of Blood: Modern Fables & Dark Tales, both debuted as #1 releases on Amazon in 2024, with the latter longlisted for the BSFA Awards. His writing appears widely, including in The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, Chiral Mad 5, and The HWA Poetry Showcase.
1, What draws you to the horror genre?
The opportunity to explore the two most significant forces in the human experience–fear and love.
Fear: the drive to survive the incomprehensible monster of existence. Some fears live within the very mirror of our souls, others live within the smile of a stranger, the wave of a neighbor, a ‘hi’ from beneath your bed.
And then there’s love, the drive to give existence meaning, connection, and beauty. To find hope beyond the shared inevitability of death. No other genre allows for the exploration of these two forces more than Horror, where both fear and love can be brutally honest, but never truly apart.
2. How does horror blend into poetry for you?
Like peanut butter and jelly with a pinch of nutmeg and a tablespoon of honey stirred in a cup before being applied to a slice of raisin bread (try it). In other words, they blend good as hell. Poetry is raw consciousness and emotion wearing language as hand-me-down clothes, barely a fit, but it’s all we have.
I feed it the horrors of growing up poor in the wealthiest city in the world. I feed it the terrors of loneliness, homelessness, and abuse. I feed it all the pains of my life until the clothes rip open and my despair turns into something useful on the page. My goal is to share the truth as I experience it in my bones, to offend, contend, and uplift, to challenge and soar.
Horror is a home for raw, for primal, for wounds, and in the bleeding we find life.
3. Poetry in general evokes emotions. How do you channel darkness into poetry?
I try to use darkness to show light by removing the extraordinary from the ordinary. For example, if I take away hope in a poem, it’s for the reader to contemplate the value of hope in its absence, not to serve despair. Darkness should always be a precursor to light on some level, no matter how small. A practical way of applying this is to listen to your predominate feeling in the moment and write as much as you can without thought for the first draft, read over it, discovering what you didn’t know that you knew, and then go back and apply intention to the next pass through. I find this helps, whether applying darkness or light.
Draw from the deepest pains and loves of your own cultural experiences, from your own life. Have the courage to be vulnerable enough to tell your truth without fear.
4. All of the finalists for the Stoker Poetry award this year are people of color! Do you have advice for people of color getting into writing horror?
I noticed! Black, Yellow, and Brown! It made me so happy, so proud to be a part of it. Beyond the color of their skin, I daresay most, if not all, of them are phenomenal human beings (I might be the exception lol).
Sumiko Saulson has been a voice for inclusion for years, and it can’t be overstated how much their inclusivity efforts have helped influence this possibility. Lee Murray has been a powerful voice for her people for many years, as well as Lisa Wood and Pedro Iniguez.
My advice for people of color getting into horror is to read, read, read people like these. Draw from the deepest pains and loves of your own cultural experiences, from your own life. Have the courage to be vulnerable enough to tell your truth without fear. For many of us, the stories in our blood run as deep as the mountains are tall. In this market, the stories born of our lived-in experiences have mostly been suppressed, but those times have ended, and I feel the world not only wants but needs our perspectives.
5. In the world of horror, at least, do you see progress?
Well, sure. Am I happy I’m just the second black male nominee ever to make the final ballot in the poetry category (with former HWA President John Edward Lawson being the first)? No. Not at all. (Ironically, this makes me the shortest black male nominee ever at 6 foot 3 inches tall lol.) Just seems a bit outrageous. But in my 5 years as an HWA member, I’ve seen and met many writers of color and have noticed the community’s push to highlight those voices in the genre, which I appreciate but honestly feel has been long overdue.
But to be fair, I will say that out of all the genre communities, Horror has been the most welcoming of diverse people and voices in my opinion.
The book’s vibe is raw, visceral truth in a blend of poetic forms. No hiding. Here is my soul, red beneath the meat.
6. Would you say the collection has an overall message or vibe? What is it?
Well, The Dark Between the Twilight’s overall message is that you can transmute pain into power if you can find the courage to be vulnerable enough to live your truth, so that you might transcend the hurt, the fear, and the shame of what you had to survive simply to be.
I believe we can only become our best selves when we are being courageous, and that’s what the book is for, to help the reader be more courageous. It’s a Trojan horse of sorts that uses some of the most intimate wounds of my life, and my own journey to confront and make sense of them, to compel your own journey from darkness to light.
Sometimes, when we walk the journey of others, we also get to our own destination. The book’s vibe is raw, visceral truth in a blend of poetic forms. No hiding. Here is my soul, red beneath the meat. Maybe you’ll find a mirror…
7. You’ve spread your vibes from literature and horror into visual media. How does horror messaging change?
In film, you have sound; sound is a friend of feeling, even more than seeing. Therefore, even more than the visuals, sound aids in the ecology of terror, the environment, the atmosphere, the primal Instincts from the genetic memory of centuries spent hiding from predators in the dark.
Sound alone allows you to tell horror in a whole new way, to create an objective message rooted more in a collective experience, with the visuals being the icing on the cake. Conversely, books are always a singular love letter to the reader. In a sense, film is more literal and orchestrated, while books are more intimate and subjective. The message adjusts to these differences.
8. What was your first horror movie?
I honestly remember seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. At the time, it really messed up my little kid brain, and I couldn’t sleep for days. When I finally did and woke up, I felt like, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad.” It was the beginning of my learning to confront my fears. I fell in love with horror then; it was a way out. I’m probably the one kid Freddy Kruger saved.
9. What horror movie or show would you recommend?
The Haunting of Hill House and Black Mirror for horror series (yes, BM is technically a dark sci-fi series, but come on, you saw Common People). The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Candy Man, Tales From The Hood (classic!), Martyrs (don’t watch this), The original Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original), The Fourth Kind, Alien, Event Horizon, and The Thing.
Why? Because I’m obviously afraid of plausible horror, things that could actually happen in our immediate future, cannibalistic white people, and aliens, man. Motherfu#$ing aliens!
1o. What was the last horror book you read? What horror books / authors would you recommend?
Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around The House. It’s perhaps the best Horror novel I’ve ever read besides The Stand. It’s a triumph of tension, atmosphere, and depth—layers upon layers of complexity under the veneer of simplicity—a horror masterclass.
For poetry, I recommend all of this year’s nominees as well as my mentor Linda D. Addison’s work (duh), Christina Sng, Marge Simon, Alessandro Manzetti, Stephanie Wychovitch, Sara Tattlinger, Cynthia Pelayo, Geneve Flynn, Angela Yuriko Smith, Max I. Gold, and Colleen Anderson.
For novels, Octavia Butler, Tanarive Due, Josh Malerman, Chuck Palahniuk, Steven Barnes, Eugen Bacon, Stephen King, Stephen Graham Jones, Jonathan Maberry, Victor Lavalle, Nzondi, Michael Bailey, Kareem Hayes, and Lauren Elise Daniels.
11. Do you have a favorite cryptid, and if so, what is it?
The Noble White Man, lol. Nah, just jokes. But my serious cryptid is the Nephilim, “The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4) Giants, man, F&king Giants! There are too many ancient structures whose construction can only be explained by Giants. There are two many cultures around the world that have never met that reference them in myth, story, and song. There are relics. How do we know the Easter Island heads aren’t scale accurate, huh? I don’t care about your ‘facts’; I saw the truth on Ancient Aliens!
12. How is the horror scene in New York City? Do you have a favorite spot / local bookstore?
Well, I just moved, but in NYC, my favorite bookstore was the Barnes & Noble on 14th Street, Union Square—unfortunately, the most generic corporate space in the whole damn book world. I also love The Strand and The Schomberg, so don’t judge me too harshly.
13. Finally, what are your current and future projects, and is there anything else you want to shout out?
EVERYTHING ENDLESS, my forthcoming poetry collection, about the dimensions within and around us, is a cosmic collaboration with SFPA Grand Master and HWA living legend Linda D. Addison herself. It was through the example of her career and her impeccable creative voice that I found the blueprint for what it means to be a dark poet, so getting to embark on this journey through the micro and macros of spacetime with her has to be one of the great honors of my life.
The book is being released by the good folks at Raw Dog Screaming Press on April 22nd (Earth Day and my birthday!), and that very same week, Linda and I will be going on the first leg of our spring/summer tour.
Starting Thursday, April 24th at 6:30 pm, we will be discussing our new poetic collaboration EVERYTHING ENDLESS and the transformative power of Afrofuturism at the Plainfield Performing Arts Center (724 Park Ave, Plainfield NJ 07060), presented by City Mayor Adrian O. Mapp and the City of Plainfield, NJ.
On Friday, April 25th, at 7 pm, [we’ll be at] Barnes & Noble at 91 Old Country Road, Carle Place, NY 11514. And lastly on Saturday, April 26th, 1 pm at Vortex Books 477 Locust St, Columbia, PA 17512.
You can follow me on Instagram @directorh, on Facebook as Jamal Hodge, on Bluesky as directorh.bsky.social. My website is www.writerhodge.com.
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Peter Ong Cook
Peter Ong Cook has published stories in 2 HOWLS anthologies so far: HOWLS from the Dark Ages and HOWLS from the Scene of the Crime. His short fiction can also be found in Cosmic Horror Monthly and the anthology Trouble In Paradise. His husky resembles a wolf, the wolf featured in the HOWLS logo, but receives no royalties. The husky would just spend it on the dog-equivalent of booze.