Background Information
Dr. Fillman's research and teaching interests include 19th- and 20th-century American literature, U.S. modernism, ecocriticism, the study of poetics, and modern & contemporary American poetry. In particular, his research focuses on the relationship between literature and the environment, especially the manner in which American writers represent the natural world. He has published on the important but neglected Harlem Renaissance poet Helene Johnson. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections House Bird (Terrapin Books, 2022) and The Melting Point (Broadstone Books, 2025), and the chapbook November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2019). Recent poems have appeared in The Hollins Critic, Nashville Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and others. He was the inaugural winner of the E. Ethelbert Miller Poetry Prize at The Twin Bill Journal in 2023. He received an Editor's Choice Award in 2023 from Sheila-Na-Gig Online. He has also been a finalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award, the Keystone Chapbook Contest, and the Rash Award in Poetry. In his teaching, Dr. Fillman seeks to foster a vibrant classroom community in which all participants have an opportunity to develop their critical and creative capacities in a supportive and engaging workshop atmosphere.
Publications
CREATIVE WRITING
The Melting Point, published by Broadstone Books in 2025. (full-length collection of poetry)
House Bird, published by Terrapin Books in 2022. (full-length collection of poetry)
November Weather Spell published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2019. (poetry chapbook)
PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
"'Two Tramps in Mud-Time': Robert Frost's Muddy Pastoral Utopia" [forthcoming, The Robert Frost Review]
"'a certain amusing comfort that makes you happy': William Carlos Williams's Ambivalent Pastoral Aesthetic" [Winter 2026 2025, Journal of Modern Literature]
"'I see the blade continue cutting': The Circuitry of Healing in Jean Toomer's Pastoral Poetry in Cane." College Literature, vol. 52, no. 1, Winter 2025, pp. 107-137.
"'a solemn tortured shadow': Helene Johnson's Traumatic Pastoral," ISLE:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, vol. 29, iss. 3, Spring
2022, pp. 137-158.
"A Post-Pastoral Reading of Ron Rash's 'Speckled Trout,'" The Explicator, 2021
"Toward an Understanding of Helene Johnson's Hybrid Modernist Poetics," College
Language Association Journal, vol. 61, issue 1-2, 2018
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of A Man Made of Stories, by George Franklin, The Pedestal Magazine
Issue 97 (December 2025).
Review of Avoiding the Rapture, by Karen Weyant, Psaltery & Lyre, 2024.
Review of Twenty Four Poems, by John Yamrus, The Sunlight Press, 2023.
Review of Book of Entangled Souls, by Richard St. John, The Hollins Critic,
Vol. LX, No. 1 (Winter 2023): 16-18.
Review of Selected Poems: The Director's Cut, by John Yamrus, Compulsive Reader,
2022
Review of Scraping Away, by Fred Shaw, Appalachian Lit, Iss. 1, spring 2022
Review of A Person Worth Knowing, by Dawn Leas, FootHills Publishing, Small Harbor
Press, 2021.
Review of Waiting for the Dead to Speak, by Brian Fanelli, The Pedestal Magazine
Issue 79 (December 2016).
SELECTED JOURNAL PUBLIC ATIONS
"All day long there'd been papers" Keystone Poets Anthology, Penn State University Press (forthcoming, January 2025).
"Catsitting For My Mother-in-Law" Purr & Yowl Anthology, Concrete Mist Press, (forthcoming, 2024).
"One of Us," Halfway Down the Stairs (forthcoming, 2023).
"Local Color," San Pedro River Review, (forthcoming, 2023).
"Ichthyosaur," Slippery Elm (forthcoming, 2023).
"The Subject," The Comstock Review, (forthcoming, 2023).
"The cats have agreed to give us" Scapegoat Review, (forthcoming, 2023).
"Imagining Rembrant, 1633" Whale Road Review, (forthcoming, 2023).
"Murder" The Adirondack Review, (forthcoming, spring 2023).
"Color at the Window" The Adirondack Review, (forthcoming, spring 2023).
"When the dead dance down that" Cloudbank 17 (2023): 54.
"An Abandoned 3rd-Grade Math Problem" Cider Press Review, (summer 2023).
"We were drinking at midnight" Slipstream, (forthcoming, 2023).
"On Not Hunting Cribsy's Land Again This Year With My Kin" I-70 Review,
(forthcoming, 2023).
"On a Tuesday, my son and I are screaming" Sheila-Na-Gig online, 7.4. summer 2023.
"Shotgun Willie" Sheila-Na-Gig online,7.4. summer 2023.
"Boy on a Train" Tar River Poetry, 62.2 (spring 2023).
"Fighting Dinosaurs," Third Wednesday (summer 2023).
"The Day Baseball Taught Third Grade" The Twin Bill, (2023).
"Smoking PSA" Orange Blossom Review, (Winter 2023).
"Sorry, We're Closed for Good" Plainsongs, (Winter 2023).
"On Rembrandt's A Lady and Gentleman in Black" Broad River Review, 54
(Winter 2023): 118.
"What I Was Told About Being a Man" West Trade Review, (Winter 2022).
"Essential Worker" PQ Poem, (2022).
"I have never held a gun" Poet Lore, (2022).
"Drum Lessons with Ringo" Slipstream, (summer 2022).
"third-person-shift" Schuylkill Valley Journal, 55 (Fall/Winter 2022): 50.
"Yellowjacket
