This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Ashley M. Jones, whose new poetry collection, Lullaby for the Grieving, is out today from Hub City Press. In her fourth book, Jones studies the nature of both the personal grief of losing her father and the political grief tied to Black Southern identity. “I question the air. The spaces between the leaves. The sound of water. Has summer always been this hot, this blue? Where are you in this reality? Where did you go?” she writes in “Grief Interlude,” a seven-part series of poems that extends through the collection. “Ashley M. Jones’s poems are at once history, sermons, and soul songs,” according to Imani Perry. “With gorgeous imagery, tender attention, and abundant love she weaves a tapestry of the Black South that is as beautiful as it is honest and heart-wrenching.” Ashley M. Jones served as the first Black and youngest poet laureate of Alabama from 2022 from 2026. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including Reparations Now! (Hub City Press, 2021), longlisted for the PEN Voelker Poetry Award. She holds an MFA in poetry from Florida International University and is currently a PhD student in English at Old Dominion University. She is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.
Ashley M. Jones, author of Lullaby for the Grieving.
1. How long did it take you to write Lullaby for the Grieving?
All of my books, to date, have taken about three years to write. It’s funny, actually—I wrote my first book during my MFA program at FIU, and I’ve kept that pace for all these years. Although I don’t have the homework assignments and structure of courses to fuel me, I’m still mentally using that amount of time to let myself play and write toward my obsessions. At the three-year mark (without looking at a calendar), I start to get that feeling that it’s time to collect the work and see what it’s saying.
2. What was the most challenging thing about writing the book?
The obvious thing, of course, is that I had to write through an incredible loss. People always say that their artform helps them cope, and this is absolutely true for me. In fact, I thought I already understood what it means to cope via poetry but losing my dad is the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I thought I couldn’t survive it. But the poems (and, of course, God and family) helped me through. Processing on the page helped me get to a place where I could think about my dad and not shut down in complete sadness. I could go to the page to commune with him and remember him. The not-obvious thing is that many of these are occasional or commissioned poems, and that comes with its own difficulty. It is not easy to write an occasional poem, period. And it’s even more difficult to write that poem and have it still represent you as a writer. Each time I received a commission or a request, I had to ask myself—what is my doorway in that will allow me to do what they’re asking but still be Ashley M. Jones?
3. Where, when, and how often do you write?
I’m not a daily writer, which I say simply as a fact, not as a recommendation. I think each of us has to find and follow our own process, so I would never prescribe something! I write when it’s time. And, by that, I mean when the spirit finds me and won’t let me loose, but also when the deadline looms. More than anything, I’m often thinking about or in poems. The world is a fascinating place, and I know that part of my process is being alive, actively. Seeing and doing and feeling and thinking and wondering—all of that feeds my writing life. It’s important for us to understand—and my friend, the writer Charlotte Donlon says this in her new book—that all of life is the writing life for writers. Even if I’m not sitting down at a desk typing out a poem, I am in the process, always. My mind is full of curiosities which will find their way to being poems one day.
4. What are you reading right now?
I just finished James by Percival Everett. Loved it—I only get to read one book for fun during the summer since I am in class-prep mode for my job and now I’m taking classes as a PhD student. Not much fun time, but thankfully my job and my coursework allows me to do a lot of reading. So, in addition to James, I recently reread Animal Farm and I’m reading The Piano Lesson to prep for my students.
5. Which author, in your opinion, deserves wider recognition?
Goodness, don’t we all deserve wider recognition? Y’all are not about to get me caught up! I wish all writers the audiences they desire and the acclaim they deserve.
6. What was your strategy for organizing the poems in this collection?
Just like my writing timeline, my ordering strategy has remained the same since my MFA program. I want my poems to mirror my philosophy that everything is connected. Barriers, like barriers of time, are often artificial. What I mean is: I am alive today in Birmingham, Alabama, but I am also directly impacted by those people who were alive or who gave their lives in Birmingham in the 1960s. I am possible because of their sacrifice, joy, pain, wonder. The same is true for those who were enslaved here. And, all of our lives are directly impacting the people of the future. History is the same. We are not living in 1963 but it is living in us. So, the poems are supposed to mirror that interconnectedness. There are no sections, but the poems should speak to one another in some way.
7. What is one thing that your agent or editor told you during the process of publishing this book that stuck with you?
Recently, at a bookselling event, one of the kind ladies at Hub City told me how much she appreciates this book, and that was crucial for me to hear. I’ve spent so much time with this work, and in many ways, being in it means you can’t quite see around it. I wasn’t sure how the work would land with readers, or how it might perform on the market. But her comments reminded me that I’m not in this business for business—I’m in it because it is my soul-work, and my metric should be based in that, not dollars or even reviews. I am writing because I feel that writing was a gift God gave me, and it is my duty (and my great joy) to share that gift and to speak my truth so that whoever needs to read it can read it and feel less alone or more understood. That’s what my favorite writers’ work did for me. I hope I’m doing that for others.
8. If you could go back in time and talk to the earlier you, before you started Lullaby for the Grieving, what would you say?
I think I’d tell myself that it is possible to move forward, and that poetry can help me find the way to move.
9. Outside of writing, what other forms of work were essential to the creation of Lullaby for the Grieving?
I love all forms of art, and I consume it as much as I can. I also write about other art forms a lot. I was privileged to be able to work with some incredible artists while writing this book, and their art inspired me endlessly. Meeting and visiting with folk artist Joe Minter here in Birmingham was a soul-stirring experience, and I have carried some of his lessons with me as I keep on living. I was able to collaborate with Dr. Rebekah Griffin-Greene on “A Portrait of Harriet”—she set the words to music and it was such a cool experience to hear my poetry as a part of an orchestral piece. I saw my poetry become an animated musical short film through a project with PBS—so many of the poems in this book have lives in other artistic genres and were made through collaboration. I’m grateful to be here on Earth with so many amazing artists—it’s a gift!
10. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever heard?
As cliche as it is now, “write what you know” has really spoken to me throughout my life. It doesn’t mean, at least to me, that we are limited by our experiences, but it does mean that we are obligated to find our foothold in anything we write. I do a lot of work with history, and although I was not alive for everything I write about, I do know what it feels like, for example, to be a Black girl living in a world which does not value us. So, although I wasn’t there to know the four little girls, I am able to find my way into a poem about them, and it is my job to stay true to what I know, emotionally, and what I can verify, factually.
