You Went to the River to See What it Would Be Like to Become a Fish, by A. Logan Hill

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

You Went to the River to See What It Would Be Like to Become a Fish reflects the beauty and magic of western Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Richmond’s suburban sprawl. The poems collect stories that reflect the sacred places Logan, who was born and raised in Virginia, cherishes. The poems envision sacred moments of reflection and contemplation in nature, his dreams about the future of the world through a somatic and ecopoetic lens and, like in film photographs, elicit the joys of interpretation, curiosity, faith, sentimentality, and surprise. Every thing and every day and all that exists is beautiful.

Like the patches of farmland in Rockingham County, and the sacred music of the woods, the dusty, wrinkly streets of Richmond, the riverine landscapes along the banks of Virginia’s watershed, Logan embodies his twin-nature to explore the relationship-duality of what the world eternally presents to him and the fabled ephemera of the remnants of memory associated with such ethereal and universal gifts. The work is part sentimental/confessional and part ephemeral, ethereal, surreal, ecological and lyrical, speaking in multitudes to the possibility of peace, hospitality, and kindness to all.

A. Logan Hill is a poet, writer, artist, and educator from Harrisonburg, VA currently living in Richmond. He has been blessed to study extensively with poets including James Tate, Dara Barrois-Dixon, Lynn Xu, Peter Gizzi, Camille Rankine, Lilah Hegnauer, and Laurie Kutchins and with writers including Hilary Holladay, Sabina Murray, Edie Meidav and Noy Holland, among others. He holds an MFA in Poetry from UMASS Amherst (2017) where he was a reader for jubilat, received a B.A. in English with Creative Writing and Art Minors from James Madison University (2012) where he studied graphic design and the art of book making, and was a member of the 2004 graduating class at The American Boychoir School. His work can be found in voicemail poems, WHURK Cultural Review, Byrd Whistle, River City Poets Anthology, and the 2024 Virginia Poetry Society Anthology among other places.