Justin Hamm : part one

Justin Hamm is the author of four collections of poetry–Drinking Guinness With the Dead: Poems 2007-2021, The Inheritance, American Ephemeral, and Lessons in Ruin–as well as a book of photographs, Midwestern. He is the founding editor of the museum of americana. His poems, stories, photos, and reviews have appeared in Nimrod, Southern Indiana Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Sugar House Review, and a host of other publications.

What are you working on?

Spartan Press in Kansas City just released a retrospective of the last fifteen years of my poetry. It’s called Drinking Guinness With the Dead, Poems 2007-2021. It includes my first three collections plus new poems. I thought this would be a great time to explore a new challenge, so I’ve been collaborating with singer/songwriter Greg Dember on a series of songs. It has been a really fun and educational experience. Sometimes Greg sends me a melody and I write lyrics, sometimes I send him lyrics and he creates the melody, cleaning up phrasing or reworking lines as he goes. On one song I finished a tricky lyric for him. In another he put together two completely different sets of words, one by him and one by me, and brought the song to life that way. I really enjoy working with an album in mind, and collaborating with a partner so knowledgeable and adept at songwriting pushes my writing and thinking into new places. We’ve probably got a half-dozen songs now. Hearing them come to life when Greg puts the melody to them is exciting in a fresh way.