Works of Jerriod Avant
Black Bone by Call Number: 821.914 B624 2017 - Circulating (3rd Floor)Publication Date: 2018"We Were Being Detained" by Jerriod Avant
Muscadine by Call Number: On OrderISBN: 9781954245709Publication Date: 2023-09-15A. H. Jerriod Avant's debut collection, Muscadine, cultivates the vine of familial memory, eulogizing our collective losses while exalting the succor of this human life, how the native grape's "thick skin [that] teeth / pierce breaks to pour // sweetly across the tongue." Throughout these pages, a deeply Southern sensibility balances an environmental awareness of deficit and bounty -- appetite pains the stomach and delights the palette. In all seasons, the tongue's subversive intelligence sculpts this masterwork of love, grace, conflict, and grief. This book tastes summer and the "ruins of / an afternoon" at once; it explores the language that testifies to loss while illuminating the abundance that loss obscures. Avant accentuates the sonic joys that Black Southern voices bring to bear on memorializing the present and commemorating the past. Don't forget, he tells us. "Look how I hunger where // there is no hunger." See how the weather changes swiftly and forever: "Look / how pops left before we // thought he was done." But notice, too, how an echo sounds remembrance: "Listen, / how the voice of a dead man // can live." He commands us to take the brief blooms with us, says, "Pack me a bag / I can fit in my heart."
Biography
A. H. JERRIOD AVANT is from Longtown, MS. A graduate of Jackson State University, he’s earned MFA degrees from Spalding University and New York University. An Affrilachian Poet and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, his poems have appeared in the Mississippi Review, Boston Review, pluck!, Pinwheel and Callaloo. A finalist for the 2015 Mississippi Review Prize, Jerriod is the 2016–2017, 2nd-year Poetry Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
source:
Spriggs, Bianca Lynne, and Jeremy Paden, editors. “Biographies.” Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 2017, pp. 151–156.
