My chapbook Hundred Acre Wood was published in 2018 by Anstruther Press in Toronto. The collection is loosely organized around the theme of fatherhood.

Individual poems in Hundred Acre Wood first appeared in The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day project, The American Poetry Review, The Best of Canadian Poetry 2016, Hazlitt, Little Star, The New York Review of Books, The Southern Review, and The Walrus.

Charms Against Lightning is my first collection, published in 2012 by Copper Canyon Press as a Lannan Literary Selection. As a group, the poems describe a gradual change from being a shadow to being a human being.

Poems from Charms Against Lightning appeared in 32 Poems, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Best New Poets 2010, Brick, The Fiddlehead, Fox Chase Review, The Laurel Review, Literary Review of Canada, Many Mountains Moving, Narrative, New England Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry International, Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, Shenandoah, and Third Coast.

Charms Against Lightning was shortlisted for The Believer Poetry Award and also for the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award.


praise for Charms Against Lightning:


"Few debuts have been more hotly anticipated than James Arthur's Charms Against Lightning. His work leading up to Charms garnered nearly every award, fellowship, and grant an emerging poet could hope to win. And for good reason: in an era where poetry often amounts to little more than broken prose, Arthur distinguishes himself as an unusual craftsman, a practitioner of true vers libre."

-- Poetry Northwest


"Arthur works his magic in lines that are tightly formed yet sculpted to flow and break for maximum effect. He summons the richness of everyday detail ... as a foundation from which the broader contexts of human experience take flight. And always there is sound, and rhythm. Keep these poems close for their poetic juju against the suddenness of life's lightning strikes, and for the forgiving melody to which Arthur choreographs the tender dance of being human."

-- The American Poetry Review


"An entrenched strangeness exists in Arthur's work, derived not from linguistic hijinks but from common observations ... his tone is casual and confident, the effect slightly off-frame or out of focus, yet constantly arresting."

-- The Believer


"Arthur's debut poetry collection, Charms Against Lightning, is so confident that is almost seems to have sprung fully formed from the pen of its creator, though the crowded acknowledgments page testifies to the fact that is has been many years in the making. It is worth the wait."

-- West Branch


"Arthur is in awe of the transient, the unstable, the airy. In concert with this, his rhythms also float. Ever aware of the fragility of life and, beyond that, the instability and changeability of the whole universe, Arthur writes poems that gather and dissipate ... Arthur is a poet of big gifts delivered lightly."

-- Rattle