On Sept. 18, ETSU welcomed Major Jackson, poet and Vanderbilt professor, for the first session of the Black American Writers series for the 2023-2024 academic year. The series is a partnership between Black American Studies, The Bert C. Bach Written Word Initiative and the Department of Literature & Language, that highlights the contributions of Black American essayists, journalists, historians, writers and poets.

Major Jackson was accompanied by Jessie Graves, English professor, and Valencia Robins, assistant professor, in the D.P Culp Student Center’s forum room 311. Starting at 2 p.m., the 90-minute roundtable discussion featured questions that addressed the how’s and why’s of Jackson’s poetry.

“I am at times astonished at the fact that poetry grips me in the way that narrative marginally does, and I think it has to do with the immediacy of the voice on the page, the immediacy of the lyric. I’m encountering someone for whom I don’t know, who maybe was born in the mid-1800s, 1900s or mid-twentieth century, and yet they’re so felt, so present and alive on the stage,” said Jackson.

Photo of Major Jackson. (Contributed/parnassusbooks.net)

Jackson grew up with his grandmother in a house surrounded by bookshelves full of poems and novels of various genres. He found himself utilizing the many items that stood in front of him to cure his boredom, kickstarting his love for reading. This love started out as a hobby but grew into something so much more. Jackson graduated with a degree in accounting from Temple University based on his family’s standards, but he later received his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Oregon.

“I very much believe that, in order for us to grow, we have to intentionally break whatever grooves we’re creating as a method of writing a poem. There’s a restlessness, a creative, imaginative, intellectual restlessness where we have to get bored with what we’re doing in order to change up the ethos. The outcome is that you learn that although you’re the same container, your experiences, your emotions, the foods you like, you’ve broadened your ability to make a poem,” said Jackson.

Jackson is an author of six poems, one of which won the Cave Canem Poetry prize, a first book award dedicated to poets of African descent. He is also the voice behind the podcast “The Slowdown”, a poem study that guides the audience towards feeling and understanding their common journey.

Jackson has received numerous awards, fellowships and published many poems and essays in world-wide magazines. The Black American Writers Series was pleased to host and feature such an influential writer.

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