I Who Have Always Felt Words

For anyone who has ever carried the weight of inheritance, faith, and survival—and refused to be silent.

I Who Have Always Felt Words is a poetry collection shaped by inheritance, faith, and the radical act of thriving amid hardship. Moving through the four temperaments, Shams Alkamil crafts a lyric architecture that holds Sudanese identity, familial lineage, political violence, spirituality, and the pursuit of compassion in delicate tension.

These poems braid etymology with embodiment, tracing how language is inherited, questioned, and transformed. Alkamil interrogates what it means to belong—to a homeland fractured by violence, to a lineage marked by survival, to a spiritual tradition that both anchors and unsettles. Across the collection, voice becomes both offering and resistance: a means of devotion, protest, and continuity.

Rooted in Black diasporic consciousness and spiritual inquiry, I Who Have Always Felt Words insists on the necessity of speech even when silence is demanded. This is a book that listens deeply—to ancestors, to faith, to grief—and answers with clarity, grace, and unflinching honesty.

Shams Alkamil is a Sudanese-American poet, educator, and copywriter based in Texas. Her work is shaped by Sudanese heritage and explores Black identity, spirituality, lineage, and political commentary. She is the author of When Time Is Circular (Broadstone Books, 2024).

Her writing has appeared in House of Amal, Adi Magazine, Rowayat, Mizna, Four Way Review, Ghost City Press, Qafiyah Review, The Ana, Torch Literary Arts, and more. In 2025, she was shortlisted as a finalist for Sundress Publications’ Light Bill Incubator Microgrant.

• Publisher: Central Avenue Poetry
  
• Publish Date: January 05, 2027
  
• Pages: 96
  
• Language: English
  
• Type: Paperback
  
• EAN/UPC: 9781771684828
  
• Dimensions: 8 in H | 5.3 in W | 0.2 lb Wt
  
• BISAC Categories: Poetry