SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) - Jericho Brown has come a long way from being a kid with a knack for getting in trouble in school to becoming an educator and Pulitzer Prize winner.
On Monday (May 4), the Shreveport native was announced as the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his latest published collection, “The Tradition.”
Pulitzer Prize described “The Tradition” as “A collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.”
“The Tradition” was published by Copper Canyon Press in April 2019.
The poems examine the modern traditions of a world in which terror is accepted as normal - one in which society becomes numb to issues of racism, sexuality, rape, sexual assault, gun control and police brutality, Brown said. The pieces are juxtaposed by themes of the environment and the natural world, he said.
“It’s ultimately about what we consider our way of life, our culture, our society, what traditions we are honoring, and why do we honor them?” Brown said. “I’m trying to get at traditions that we have that we may not know we have. We have a tradition of injustice in this country that we have picked up and walk around with, yet people are dying. People are dying because of that injustice and tradition.”
LITERARY PRAISE
“The Tradition” is the third collection Brown has published. All have earned him much praise, press, awards, and honors.
Prior to the latest book release came two poetry collections “Please” (2008) and “The New Testament” (2014) for which he received the Whiting Award, The American Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, “The Tradition” earned him the Paterson Poetry Prize and a place in the finals for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In October, Brown returned to Shreveport to accept the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence presented by Centenary College’s Department of English.
Publications to feature Brown’s literary works include The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry.
Brown also is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Everything that I’ve ever been a part of has now been validated and I want to be a part of that validation,” Brown said. “Shreveport is a great city and it can now say that it is the home of the Pulitzer Prize. It raised a Pulitzer Prize winner. I’m happy to be a part of that for Shreveport.”
THE BIRTH OF JERICHO BROWN
Brown, 44, is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor and at Emory University in Atlanta. Yet, he remains deeply rooted in his hometown Shreveport a place he credits as the foundation for his career and the inspiration for “The Tradition.”
“I love going back to Shreveport. I love being in my old neighborhood. I love going to Cedar Grove and I love how all of those memories come flooding back to me because that’s where my poems always come out of,” Brown said. “I’m always looking back to some memory. So being in Shreveport, coming back there, helps me get closer to those memories which ultimately becomes how I make a living for myself.”
However, before there was famed poet Jericho Brown, there was Nelson Demery III -known as Trey by friends and family in Shreveport.
Brown changed his name several years after leaving Shreveport at the age of 18. He was on a quest to find his own identity.
“The first time I had a poem published it said Nelson Demery III and my immediate thought was, ‘Wow, I can’t even have that because it had my name and two other guys’ names on this one poem,” Brown said. “I wanted my poem to be mine. I wanted a name that was my own. I was interested in figuring out and becoming who I was, who I am.”
The name Jericho Brown became more than a pseudonym. It gifted him individuality.
The name change was the catalyst for him to freely and boldly express himself without fear of persecution.
“I was under the impression that if I wrote poems under a new name that I would be free to write my poems without thinking about what people at church were going to say or parents or institutions or schools or my fraternity,” Brown said. “I would be free to write the poems to be as subversive as they needed to be, and they wouldn’t be anybody’s poem because that person who’s writing them, in a way, didn’t really exist.”
A POETIC AWAKENING
In the early days, Brown was a B-average student but was far from being thought of as the kid who would one day go forward to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
As early as 6 years old, he found refuge in poetry, though not because of their profound depth.
“I fell in love with poetry because poems are short,” Brown said. “I got excited about poems because I could blow right through them. I wasn’t intimidated. I would pick up a novel and it would be all this text on the page and I would be intimidated by the words because I was a little kid… I didn’t have any idea what they were about or really meant or said, but I didn’t care. I just liked the feeling of satisfaction of getting through the book.”
After school, Brown’s mother would take him and his brother to the library after school. The librarians knew of Brown’s interest in the art form and stacks of poetry books would be waiting for him. He read them in their entirety.
“Librarians are angels sent from heaven, walking around on earth,” Brown said. “That’s how I fell in love with Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Phyllis Wheatley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton. I read a lot of the poems in the library and I was learning to read poetry by reading poetry.”
His exposure to poetry was furthered in church. His family attended Mt. Canaan Baptist Church in the Allendale neighborhood in Shreveport. He studied the poetic aspects of the Bible, particularly in the Book of Psalms. From the congregation, he watched Pastor Harry Blake and other ministers and church leaders admiring the “plain and dignified” way they spoke, Brown said.
“I was interested in that level of speech and what it meant and how speaking could actually move people,” he said. “I thought that was the best thing that words could do.”
Brown began to write poetry and though he said they weren’t good, he said, his mother still hung them on the refrigerator.
“The older I got, the more serious I got about it and the poems became more and more like poems,” he said.
Yet, in a formal education setting, Brown struggled. In elementary school, he attended a different school each year. He often was reprimanded, suspended, or expelled for behavioral issues and violence, he said.
“I was not the model student. That’s for sure,” Brown said. “I was fighting other students and fighting the teachers.”
Looking back, Brown describes the youthful version of himself as “a complete feminine nerd” who didn’t know how to back down in altercations when teased by other students. Things began to turn around in the sixth grade after his father had a serious heart-to-heart conversation concerning Brown’s behavior, education, and future. The severity of the issue finally began to resonate, he said.
Brown’s high marks earned him an acceptance letter to Caddo Middle Magnet and for the first time, he attended a school for two consecutive years - for seventh and eighth grades. Then, for four years, he attended C.E. Byrd High School from where he would graduate.
He set off to major in poetry at Dillard University in New Orleans. Part of the private institution’s appeal was its rich black cultural history and its smaller classroom where Brown could have one-on-one time with professors, he said. As one who didn’t have a strong track record with school, he feared getting lost on a large campus and lecture hall settings.
He flourished at Dillard University becoming an A-student, he said, and earned his bachelor’s degree. Next, he worked his way up to becoming a speechwriter to the then-mayor of New Orleans, simultaneously, attending the University of New Orleans where he continued to study the art form and earn his Master of Fine Arts degree. At the end of the mayoral term, Brown relocated to Texas to earn his PhD. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston.
“The same kid who kept getting put out of school was in somebody’s Ph.D. program and finishing,” Brown said.
Brown was the commencement speaker for his graduating class at the University of Houston - a detail he hid from his family until they saw him leading the procession then step on stage to give his speech. The moment of surprise is a memory he holds on to proudly.
His educational achievements and Pulitzer Prize win are validating for the poet - a career path that veers from conventional professions, such as a doctor or lawyer.
“There’s no translation. There’s no context around the word,” Brown said. “You say poet to a lot of people and they get stuck in people who aren’t alive like Shakespeare or Langston Hughes. If it becomes contemporary, they get stuck at Maya Angelou. They think of the way these people were poets as the only way for poetry or for being a poet.”
Brown offers words of advice and encouragement for kids attempting to find their way.
“It’s important to know what the possibilities are and to think about what you really love to do,” he said. “If you know the possibilities, then you can create options. But you can’t do that if you don’t know the possibilities and you don’t try new things. Whatever you do for the rest of your life needs to be something you love to do.”
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