Cameron Brooks
Poet & Essayist
Poet & Essayist
👋🏻 Howdy. My name is Cameron. I'm a writer with roots in South Dakota. I enjoy a good espresso, Blackwing pencils, and bebop jazz. Here’s the full bio:
Cameron Brooks is a poet and essayist from South Dakota. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Sioux Falls and an M.A. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His work is found or forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry East, Cumberland River Review, Third Wednesday, North Dakota Quarterly, Ad Fontes, Ekstasis, Red Ogre Review, and elsewhere. His poem “White Space” won the South Dakota State Poetry Society annual contest.
Cameron is currently an M.F.A. candidate in creative writing at Seattle Pacific University.
Vanora is a creative collaboration project that I co-founded with a friend who’s an abstract painter. We pair our art forms and explore broad themes through our work.
Join me on Substack
brkscmrn.substack.com
Where you can find my words
Solum Press: "A Seagull Scans a Fallow Field"
Third Wednesday: "Welcome to the World"
Ekstasis Magazine: "Dill Soup without the Dill"
Pasque Petals: "Blessed Zephyr"
North Dakota Magazine: "Red Light"
Ad Fontes: "Early Morning Embers"
Ecstatic: Wild, Wild Words: On Cormac McCarthy’s Legendary Prose Style
Vanora: Why We All Need Poetry Now
Conversant: The Land of Infinite Variety
Public Reading, Full Circle Book Co-op, Sioux Falls, SD, May 16, 2024
Open Mic, Full Circle Book Co-op, Sioux Falls, SD, November 26, 2022
Public Reading, Seattle Pacific University, August 9, 2022
Creative Writing Class, Lecture & Reading, University of Sioux Falls, November 15, 2021.
English Class, Talk & Reading, St. John Middle School, Seward, NE, Fall 2021.
John R. Milton Writer’s Conference, University of South Dakota, September 16-18, 2021.
When I'm not writing, reading, eating pizza, or teaching my son about Thelonious Monk, I'm probably spreading the word about Blackwing pencils. Because that's my day job.
White Space
Awake to snow-freighted pines,
blue snow upon the pasture
where five shining horses graze
with snow in their manes. They
know grass has begun to grow
beneath the snow, having tasted
it only yesterday. A bruised bouquet
of dried chili peppers dangles
from the doorframe of my cabin
like a frozen claw. Crescent moons
of snow slouch in the nose slits
and eye sockets of a deer skull
pegged to a post, its antlers
and remaining teeth so dull
against unadulterated drifts
of snow, not white, not ivory,
just bone, the hollow color of bone.
Send me your inquiries, comments, brilliant ideas. I’d be happy to hear from you. Hit the button to start an email.
