Arden Eli Hill writes poetry of terrible, unflinching tenderness, that insists upon the truth. These poems are full of fierce clarity, unmitigated indictment, and the sort of devastating lyric beauty that leaves you solaced even as you are cracked open.
Tony Amato, writing coach and editor.
Praise for Bloodwater Parish
An exploration of identity is at the heart of Arden Eli Hill’s haunting poems. A Louisiana native, an adoptee inheriting the histories of both his biological and adoptive families, and a trans poet, Hill stirs up a jambalaya of complex intersectionalities. He takes us on a journey—both internal and external, personal and mythic—from “the river’s ancient mouth / to the city’s soaking center,” to those ineffable parishes where blood and water mix and he learns how to embody “the stories my skin was never told.
Grace Bauer, author of Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems
Arden Eli Hill’s poems are profoundly honest explorations of the fissures made visible by the inextricable complexities of family, gender, difference, and the body. Hill’s work is a calling to intersections, arguing in urgent and vulnerable registers, for the necessary connections between past and present, self and other, family and world. We are lucky, indeed, to have such a crucial and powerful queer voice in poetry!
Stacey Waite, author of Butch Geography