And our country is what, only 200-something years old? Are we so removed from those halls in which racist laws were written in ink and sealed with blood? The very room in which I received my Poet Laureate commendation was the room in which Alabama lawmakers voted to secede from the Union. I’m the first person of color and the youngest in the state’s 91-year history of the position. Jones: Thanks so much! Becoming Poet Laureate of Alabama is an honor, yes, and it’s also so dizzying to think that I’m a “first” like those we learn about in history books. How would you describe this book’s message about Alabama?Īshley M.
It contains lots of poems about the beauties of the deep South-the accents, the land, the heritage of Black resistance-but also about the region’s brutal history as it intersects with U.S. Lesley Wheeler: Congratulations on becoming the Poet Laureate of Alabama, Ashley! That honor converges with the publication of REPARATIONS NOW!, your powerful third collection and an intensely place-based book. Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, she can be found online at and. She has received fellowships from Fulbright, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other grantors. Her first novel, Unbecoming, was published in 2020, and her first essay collection, Poetry’s Possible Worlds, will appear in 2022. Lesley Wheeler is the author of five poetry collections, most recently The State She’s In. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine.
Jones co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She teaches Creative Writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and in the Low Residency MFA at Converse University. Her awards include the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize. Jones, Poet Laureate of Alabama, is the author of Magic City Gospel, dark / / thing, and REPARATIONS NOW!. Back to Issue Forty A Conversation Between Ashley M.
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