Former Houstonian and winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, Jericho Brown - Virtual IMPRINT event

 

Inprint presents a National Poetry Month celebration with former Houstonian and renowned poet Jericho Brown

Monday, April 26, 7 pm CT, live online For $5 general admission tickets or more information, click here. Join Inprint for an important conversation about poetry and survival with former Houstonian and winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, Jericho Brown. Jericho will read a selection of poems, including work from his latest collection The Tradition, and then converse with winner of the 2020 National Books Critics Circle Award, francine j. harris.

The Tradition by Jericho Brown Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning Names in heat, in elements classical Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.  Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter On this planet than when our dead fathers Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.  Men like me and my brothers filmed what we Planted for proof we existed before Too late, sped the video to see blossoms Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems Where the world ends, everything cut down. John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

Beauty abounds in Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, despite and inside of the evil that pollutes the everyday. A National Book Award finalist, The Tradition questions why and how we’ve become accustomed to terror: in the bedroom, the classroom, the workplace, and the movie theater. From mass shootings to rape to the murder of unarmed people by police, Brown interrupts complacency by locating each emergency in the garden of the body, where living things grow and wither—or survive. In the urgency born of real danger, Brown’s work is at its most innovative. His invention of the duplex—a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues—is an all-out exhibition of formal skill, and his lyrics move through elegy and memory with a breathless cadence. Jericho Brown is a poet of eros: here he wields this power as never before, touching the very heart of our cultural crisis.

Praise for The Tradition: “To read Jericho Brown’s poems is to encounter devastating genius.” — Claudia Rankine “This is one of the most luminous and courageous voices I have read in a long, long time.” — Tracy K. Smith “This is a truly wonderful book. These emotions and history Jericho shares are much needed in these times." — Nikki Giovanni

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