Jericho Brown has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his latest
collection, "The Tradition" on
4th May 2020. The prize
for poetry is given annually to a “distinguished volume of original verse by an
American author.” In selecting Brown’s book for the honour, the Pulitzer board
called it “a collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with
historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility
and violence.”
In short and deceptively
simple lines, Brown’s poems in “The Tradition” explore the growing existence of
trauma as part of an American culture both accustomed to ignoring evil – and
unable to make change without taking the risk to acknowledge the pain it
causes.
He captures that sentiment, surrounded by vivid
imagery, in one of the book’s poems, “The Crossing” he says:
“I’m more than a conqueror, bigger
Than bravery.
I don’t march.
I’m the one who leaps.”
Brown
also invented a new poetic form called the “duplex” to challenge the existing
rules of poetry while his words challenged the contradictory myths and culture
of the nation.
