Award-Winning Poet Jericho Brown Visits Trinity for Reading and Workshop

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown bounded up the stairs and onto the stage of the Washington Room to the sound of thunderous applause, as attendees rose to their feet.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” Brown said with a smile. During his introduction just moments earlier, he told the crowd to greet him as though Beyoncé had entered the room. It foreshadowed the sort of affable and deeply personal style Brown would bring to his reading and discussion with more than 200 students and other members of the Trinity College community on April 17. Guests from the Hartford and broader Connecticut communities attended as well, as did partners from Central Connecticut State University who co-sponsored the program.

Brown is an internationally acclaimed poet whose third book, The Tradition, earned a Pulitzer for poetry. In 2024, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” for his work. His visit to Trinity was part of the Allan K. Smith Reading Series.

Earlier in the day Brown, a professor at Emory University, held a writing workshop at the Smith House for more than two dozen students from Trinity and Central Connecticut State University—something he described as “one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me in Connecticut.” During this workshop, Brown guided students through the process of composing a “duplex,” a type of poetic structure he created that is described as part sonnet, part ghazal (originating from Arabic poetry), and part blues poem.

The Washington Room poetry reading began with “Prayer of the Backhanded” from the 2008 collection Please, a piece recounting the relief of being struck by an empty hand rather than an instrument of corporal punishment.

For the next 45 minutes, Brown would read works from across his anthology, with poems giving glimpses into pop culture, classical literature, and growing up outside the city of Shreveport. His intonation blended hints of Cajun drawl and a breathy staccato, counterpointing the small moments of humor and beauty that exist between the most brutal of societal ills. Flowing through it all were the pains and triumphs of messy familial relations and the experience of a gay black man in America.

Trinity College Associate Professor of English David Sterling Brown ’06 organized and moderated the event, and following the reading eschewed a discussion format in favor of questions and answers with the audience, whose members happily complied with an overflow of inquiries.

On self-censorship, Jericho Brown pushed the difficult goal of staying true to oneself and not caring what others think. A question of how to compartmentalize a subject’s positive and negative qualities for the sake of writing led to examining a person’s whole character for who they are, reconciling the good and bad as a difficult but necessary confrontation.

A question about the poem “On Whiteness” led to a short divergence on his love for Fleetwood Mac. Jericho Brown shared how he developed a love for poetry as a child at the public library, cultural lessons learned at Sunday School, and how the name Jericho appeared in a dream and became more than just a pen name.

Dozens of attendees stayed for a reception following the event, with Brown answering questions from fans and students while signing books and posing for photos.

Watch a recording of the program below: