Major Jackson

Acclaimed Author & Teacher
Host of The Slowdown

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  • An Evening with Major Jackson

Biography

“Major Jackson makes poems that rumble and rock.” —Dorianne Laux

“Jackson knows the truth of black magic. It is a magic as simple as the belief in humanity that subverts racism, or the esoteric and mystical magic of making jazz, the music of hope and love.” —Afaa Weaver

Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry: Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023); The Absurd Man (2020); Roll Deep (2015); Holding Company (2010); Hoops (2006), all published by W.W. Norton; and Leaving Saturn (2002) by University of Georgia Press. Holding Company and Hoops were both selected as finalists for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry; and Leaving Saturn, awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. In The Absurd Man, inspired by Albert Camus’s seminal Myth of Sisyphus, Jackson’s fifth volume subtly configures the poet as “absurd hero” and plunges headfirst into a search for stable ground in an unstable world. In Roll Deep, he appropriated the vernacular notion of “rolling deep” to explore human intimacy and war, seeking a rhythmic sound that expresses the realities of the twenty-first century.

Jackson’s collection of his selected prose, A Beat Beyond (2022), edited alongside Amor Kohli, is an anthology that revels in the work of poetry not only to limn and assess the intellectual and spiritual dimensions of poets, but to amplify the controversies and inner conflicts that define our age: political unrest, climate crises, the fallout from bewildering traumas, and the social function of the art of poetry itself. About the book, Edward Hirsch noted, “Ralph Waldo Emerson defined transcendentalism as ‘a little beyond,’ and that’s the spirit I find animating Major Jackson’s marvelous prose meditations on poetry and music. I admire him as a poet of the high lyric, the lyrical self, and these pieces emerge from that central driving impulse. Informed by history, dragged down by racism, Jackson nonetheless views art as a majestic vehicle of transport, a way to enrich, deepen, and free us, to soar.”

Jackson has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry. He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry in 2019. A recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, he has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress.

Jackson has served as a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Adelphi University, a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College. He has taught at the University of Vermont, Columbia University, New York University, Xavier University of Louisiana, and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence. Jackson also serves as the new host of the celebrated Poetry Foundation podcast, The Slowdown. He will carry on the tradition, following last year’s curation by United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón, of sharing a selected poem and thoughtful reflection every weekday, offering listeners a daily opportunity to find connection and calm through poetry.

Major Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Short Bio

Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry: Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems; The Absurd ManRoll DeepHolding CompanyHoops; and Leaving Saturn, which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry. He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry in 2019. Jackson is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress.

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