A. H. Jerriod Avant
USA
A. H. Jerriod Avant’s work is steeped in the rural, pastoral landscapes of the American Deep South.
Work
Featured Work
Sound Tunnels
These poems started as a way for me to write myself out of what felt like a rut. I began pulling whole sentences, phrases, objects, and sounds that colored my everyday life and conversations in cyclical ways—old sayings from long gone elders being told to me by surviving elders and I became obsessed with them and felt there was more to them than what they brought to bear on their surfaces. Sure, a live Bush Hog grunting near or over your feet will likely have you piss your pants but how cool is it to know one’s way around that machine with ease and poise, to know the music of the activity so intimately as to have that music replicated with language, which is one of the ideas that poem wants to dig at with its sonic play. After a while these poems grew into a kind of palindrome that became part blues poem, held together primarily by the vowel sounds of an initial sentence or phrase. The pleasure is intense when reading these vowels aloud and realizing what they make possible given one’s southerness, Blackness, dialect, and tonality.
—A. H. Jerriod Avant
The Nerve of Death
eye red fly cheeks derivin’ by spreads for pryin’ meringue
a bed by weeks revivin’ shy treads far tryin’ abstain
fuh sked high shrieks enliven why said of fryin’ amain
spy dread sky reeks survivin’ I bred applyin’ da thang
cuh shred lie reaps connivin’ lye read a cryin’ for pain
the dead I keeps alive in my head are dyin’ again
the dead I keeps alive in my head are dyin’ again
cuh shred lie reaps connivin’ lye read a cryin’ for pain
spy dread sky reeks survivin’ I bred applyin’ da thang
fuh sked high shrieks enliven why said of fryin’ a mayne
a bed by weeks revivin’ shy treads far tryin’ abstain
eye red fly cheeks derivin’ by spreads for pryin’ meringue
Soopah Thik
how glance bluff we thick commencement cuh slang lend gut ideas
chow sand snuff see sit cement cent suh hang blend mutt fly deal
wow man shucks he shyt contentment the sang land cut by steals
sow can gruff free it intentional wranglin’ strut die meal
vow ran rough be hit we mention a danglin’ but why heal
plow an’ stuff me wit’ resentment fuh stranglin’ what I feel
plow an’ stuff me wit’ resentment fuh stranglin’ what I feel
vow ran rough be hit we mention a danglin’ but why heal
sow can gruff free it intentional wranglin’ strut die meal
wow man shucks he shyt contentment the sang land cut by steals
chow sand snuff see sit cement cent suh hang blend mutt fly deal
how glance bluff we thick commencement cuh slang lend gut ideas
A Reason to Git Back
bush hogs ova feet drain drawls
gushin’ dogs go fuh treats rain falled
slushin’ frogs sober Sweet James Jones
brushin’ fogs off undah peak nightfall
rushin’ hogs off up on meek freak hall
pushin’ flogs off us in the reekin’ white zones
pushin’ flogs off us in the reekin’ white zones
rushin’ hogs off up on meek freak hall
brushin’ fogs off undah peak nightfall
slushin’ frogs sober Sweet James Jones
gushin’ dogs go for treats rain falled
bush hogs ova feet drain drawls
A. H. Jerriod Avant
Artist Statement
My work is steeped in the rural, pastoral landscapes of the American Deep South. Most recently it is driven by an obsession and an appreciation for the sonic qualities of southern Black speech communities and seeks to privilege the sonics of African American Vernacular English, Black dialectal speech, and the myriad inheritances brought forth by it, including but not restricted to grief/loss, fugitivity, dispossession, community, love, and sheer fed-upness. My work involves a deep desire for tradition, play, subversion, and the blending of poetic forms. Think Amiri Baraka’s Un Poco Low Coup and Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary (among others) as seminal texts I admire and am constantly revisiting. In them is a great degree of defiance and innovation that spreads across the aim of much of my own writing.
I want the language in my work to “tap out” from the overabundance of music and formal subversions of English grammar. I’m struck most clean when I encounter work that has truly taken language to its limits, when language has become so close to nonlinearity that legibility is difficult except for the legibility of affect ringing loud and clear in the poet’s intention. Much of my motivation with this work be based in the survival of my most loved and natural speech.
Instagram: @ahjerriodvant
A. H. Jerriod Avant is the author of Muscadine (Four Way Books, September 2023). Born and raised in Longtown, Mississippi, Jerriod is a graduate of Jackson State University and has earned MFA degrees from Spalding University and New York University. He’s received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and The James Castle House. A recipient of the Amiri Baraka scholarship from Naropa Summer Writing Program and the John Ciardi scholarship from The Bread Loaf Writer’s conference, Jerriod has received two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and an emerging artist grant from the St. Botolph Club Foundation. His poems appear in Mississippi Review, Callaloo, Boston Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Baffler, the Yale Review, and other journals. He’s currently a candidate for the English PhD at the University of Rhode Island and is the Teaching Fellow in English at Wesleyan University.
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