Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation welcomes Junious “Jay” Ward to the Final Draught stage on Monday, May 1 at 6:00 pm at Town Brewing Company.
The nationally award-winning poet and Charlotte’s inaugural Poet Laureate will be sharing his latest work, Composition:
These poems travel time, experiment with form, honor my parents, explore my own blackness, interrogate the idea of [dominant race]ness through a multiracial lens, open dialogue with and rebut documents dealing with interracial marriage in the south, open up about grief while shining the light on resilience, and shout out my small hometown, Rich Square NC, and I can’t wait for you to read them!”
Tickets are on sale now and include a signed copy of Composition.
BIOGRAPHY
Junious ‘Jay’ Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), and the author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press, 2020) and Composition (forthcoming from Button Poetry, 2022). Jay currently serves as a Program Director for BreatheInk, where he facilitates writing and performance workshops and coaches youth poets attending Brave New Voices each year. He serves as vice-chair for the board of The Watering Hole, a non-profit organization that aims to nurture writers of color in the Southern tradition. He also serves on several curatorial committees related to the arts in Charlotte. He has attended Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Crabfat Magazine, Lackadaisy Lit Mag, Four Way Review, Diode Poetry Journal, and on Button Poetry.
