Junious 'Jay' Ward (Of the Field, the Mythic Perception of the South, and the Vulnerable Document)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Inheritance" and "Homecoming, Rich Square, NC" (Fourway Review)

Purchase: Composition (Button Poetry, 2023)

Junious 'Jay' Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal and elsewhere.

Recommended Reading and Listening:

Year of the Dog by Deborah Paredez (Boa Editions)

Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press)

Zong! by M. nourbeSe philip (Graywolf Press)

Defacing the Monument by Susan Briante (Noemi Press)

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf)

Catherine Rockwood's Episode 44: Of Pirates, the Event of the Image, and Angelic Sex