Civitella Ranieri is celebrating African American History Month by featuring some of our African American alumni. We asked Jericho Brown (CRF 2015)…
What are you working on now?
“My newest book, “The Tradition,” is about the normalization of evil in the United States of America. From school shootings to sexual coercion, the book attempts to how and why we’ve become desensitized to some of the worst news that has ever made it across onto our televisions, in our newspapers, and throughout our social media outlets.”
How did Civitella influence you or your work?
“Many of the early poems in the book were written at Civitella, and I know now that I had to be away from home in order to see it more clearly. The residency afforded me the chance to make into lines and sentences the very trauma that haunted and blinded me here in the States. I will never forget how free it felt to work without interruption and to know I had the time to take an idea as far and deep as any idea should go.”
A link to Jericho’s new book…https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781556594861.