where despair runs deep & hope's embrace will keep my head above water

where despair runs deep & hope's embrace will keep my head above water is a curated anthology of contemporary voices from South Carolina-featuring both student and adult poets. Spanning Goose Creek, Summerville, North Charleston, downtown Charleston, and including a poet from the Columbia area, these poems hold space for grief, beauty, resistance, and renewal.

The collection is divided into two parts:

// we're learning to surface features poems by student writers navigating identity, emotion, and the glimmers of voice.

// we carry what the water gave us gathers work from adult poets reflecting, reckoning, and remembering.

Together, these sections lift up emerging youth alongside established local writers, offering an honest, genre-defiant look at what it means to be human here and now. With themes ranging from mental health to justice, memory to transformation, this book is a testament to the creative pulse of the Lowcountry-and to the way poetry gives language to what we're carrying.

Featuring:

Adyson Hallows

Addison Edwards

Abigail Sullivan

Aniyah Martin

Aziia Bailey

Bri Miller

Carrie Parker Ackerman

Charlee Reed

Cheyenne Hurst

Conner Poss

DaJenqiue McBee aka @Speak_nek

Faith Walker

Heather Rose

Hero Howard

Kaitlyn Johnson

Keira Grantham

Layle Keane Chambers

Le'Mar Smalls

Linda Joy Walder

malarilesley

Natasha Akery

Sofie Williams

William Lawrence Johnson

Compiled by Marcus Amaker, Charleston, SC's first Poet Laureate and a South Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee.