H J Archer

I am not a poet because I wanted to be one. I became a poet because life gave me no other choice. The page became the only place I could speak freely, where pain didn’t have to be filtered or dressed up. I write from the ache real, lived, and often lonely. My work is born from rejection, from being misunderstood, from standing at the edges of both society and faith. I’ve been judged for the ethnicity, ignored because of my disability, dismissed because I don't fit into clean religious boxes. I’ve seen the church doors shut while I stood outside. I’ve felt what it’s like to pray into silence, to search for God and hear nothing back.

But I haven’t given up. In fact, it’s in those very moments when everything fell apart that I discovered what faith really means. Not perfection. Not certainty. But holding on anyway. Crying out to God while simultaneously wondering if He’s even listening. My faith is cracked and weathered, but it’s mine. I don't write from a place of spiritual superiority; I write as someone still walking through the fire, who refuses to pretend that pain and belief can’t coexist.

Every poem I’ve written in Lamantations Rhapsody, is a conversation with God, even if it sounds like an argument or a complaint. I write about suffering not to wallow in it, but to show that it's holy ground too. That your brokenness doesn’t disqualify you from grace it might be the very thing that brings you to it. I write for the outcasts, the doubters, the ones who still love God even though their lives are falling apart. I write for the lonely, the forgotten, and the tired souls who are just trying to make it to morning. If that’s you, then I hope these words feel like someone sitting beside you, not preaching at you.

I believe there’s glory in the struggle. That even when the answers don’t come, the questions still matter. And that somehow, some way, God is still near even in the silence. Especially in the silence.

I write from the margins the places where pain lingers long after the moment has passed. My words come from real wounds: rejection, isolation, injustice, silence from the heavens. I’ve been overlooked for how I look, dismissed for how I speak, and pushed away by the very places I turned to for refuge. But through all of it, I’ve kept my eyes on God even when I couldn’t hear Him, even when I was angry, bitter, or broken. My faith is not tidy; it’s raw, questioned, bruised. But it’s still faith.

I'm not here to pretend everything’s fine or to write comfortable poetry that skips over suffering. I write what’s real. My poems are laments, confessions, declarations born in silence, carried by endurance, and soaked in grace. I’ve never been afraid to ask hard questions, and I’ve never stopped hoping for honest answers.

I carry the weight of my own story, but I write for others too for those who feel unseen, unheard, unwanted. If you’ve ever felt like God forgot you, like you’re too broken to matter, like your voice has no place I see you. I’ve been you. And maybe through my words, we can find something holy in the wreckage. A spark of peace. A flicker of hope. A reminder that even when you feel completely alone you’re not.