Jacob Kramer, Author
Black Mountain poet Jacob Kramer’s collection A Swish on the Shrine’s Steps contains what he describes as “simple poems” from the last ten years. Kramer earned a BA in Creative Writing from UNC-Asheville, is working on a Master’s in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has had work appear in publications including Furrow, Headwaters and Mountain Xpress. “For 15 years, I’ve been writing in a register ranging from elaborate to unadorned,” he says. “Like many poets, all I care about is wisdom and love.”
Kramer’s work, says author Jordan DeLonge in a review, exemplifies what poems strive to be: “divinely accessible, exceptional and common, at once.” Kramer also writes philosophy, fiction, spiritual texts and literature outside of genre. He describes his 2020 publication The Case Is Closed as “a multi-genre book exploring the far limits of literary form and purpose.” He is currently at work on a spiritual sci-fi novel, and he has two additional completed poetry manuscripts he hopes to have published.
“Meditation, friendship and coffee are my timeless pleasures,” Kramer says. For those who pick up this collection, he says, “I’d hope for a reader to go away purified in contact with their heart and mind: like clean linen on a laundry line on a sunny day.”
A Swish on the Shrine’s Steps: The First Decade of Poems, December 2025, poetry, paperback, $17.50, by Jacob Kramer. Learn more at KramerWorks.com and Lulu.com. Quietude Retreat Center, in partnership with White Horse Community Hub, hosts Spirit of Craft: A Weekly Poetry Workshop Thursdays from 1:30–3:30 p.m. The event is free. Learn more at QuietudeNow.com/events.
