Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Got Some River in Us by Nancy Dafoe K’74.

June 19, 2026

Tags Kirkland College Alumna

(Finishing Line Press, 2026).

Unlike a collection of poems, this book is a single long-form poem in five parts that offers an integrated collage of Mississippi artist Jamie Tate’s art and Dafoe’s words. The result is an immersion in the pre-history and history of the American mythic landscape of the Delta — the art and culture of the region; the natural world and myths surrounding it; and a visual and linguistic commentary on the faults and extraordinary gifts of the region and its peoples.

“Got Some River in Us takes on a number of extraordinary challenges to become its whole: the skill and understanding of ekphrasis as the poem converses with the art, the book-length poem itself, but also a work that braids science, nature, and social justice, in a bold yet controlled voice. It is the poetry of place and of witness in its best sense. Dafoe brings to mind Allison Hedge Coke, Crystal Williams, Martha Collins, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Sai Sh?nagon, Barbara Kingsolver — writers who see the complexity of the world around us and render their visions and truth in words, as the poem carves its way through pages like the river it celebrates,” one reviewer notes.