Angela Jackson is an award-winning poet, novelist, and playwright who has published three chapbooks and four volumes of poetry. Born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised on Chicago’s Southside, she was educated at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
Jackson has written several collections of award-winning poetry and has received numerous awards including the Carl Sandburg Award and the Chicago Sun-Times/Friends of Literature Book of the Year Award.
The collection, It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time (2015) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Open Book Award a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Prize. Jackson also received a Pushcart Prize and an American Book Award for Solo in the Boxcar Third Floor E (1985). Jackson has a forthcoming poetry project due in 2021.
“Poetry lingers in a moment and ceases all it can out of the language and senses of that moment.“
N’DIGO sat down with Angela and discussed her appointment as Illinois Poet Laureate and what’s next on the horizon for the Chicago poet.
N’DIGO: How did you become such a writer?
Angela Jackson: I remember the first poem I ever read. It was in first grade at St. Ann Church located on 55th and Wentworth. I wrote my first poem in third grade, about me. “My Mother Jumps for Joy.”
Do you write poetry?
I write as a novelist, playwright, and biographer. It has been said, that I hide my poems in different forms of writing. The difference in writing poetry is it lingers in a moment and ceases all it can out of the language and senses of that moment. Whereas, a narrative, fiction, and plays have to progress, every moment has to move on to the next moment.
Tell me about your biography on Gwendolyn Brooks, A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun – The Life and Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks. Ms. Brooks was Poet Laureate for the State of Illinois from 1968 to 2000.
I got a call from publisher Beacon Press asking if I would write a biography on Ms. Brooks to celebrate the centennial of her birth. I asked her daughter, Ms. Nora Brooks Blakley, for her approval. She said that her mother would be delighted for me to do so.
I started writing in March 2016 and had to complete the work by December. I did the research from pages of the Chicago Defender and other periodicals capturing her life from 1934 to 1975. I visited the University of Illinois in Urbana to research correspondence and her papers in the Brooks Archives and wrote at the same time. I had to finish a chapter a month to meet the deadline.
What inspires you to write poetry?
Everything. Family, romance, love, police murders of innocent Blacks.
Who’s your favorite poet?
Gwendolyn Brooks.
You are the fifth Illinoisan to hold the title of Poet Laureate for the State of Illinois. What’s it like to be Poet Laureate?
I am just beginning to talk about it. I have innated different programs that support poetry. One is to send 4 young poets around the state to do a residency in schools and community centers, to share poetry with young people, and to encourage others to write about poetry and to read. I will train the poets to get them oriented on how to work in the classroom. Another activity is for senior citizens. We will host a contest for people over the age of 70 to write poetry, this is a sponsored contest. The largest contest will be the college prize. It is for college students to write poetry. Another poetry innovative is a scholarship for a young person interested in poetry to attend school.
Who are your favorite authors?
Toni Morrison and Zora Neal Hurston.
What are you working on currently?
I am working on a project for my family to record our journey living from Greenville, Mississippi to Chicago up to the early 1980s. I am also working on documenting Catholic organ stories with the St. Benedict The African Catholic Church. I am researching, why people become and remain Catholic. I have a new book of poetry coming out in 2021, More Than Meets and Raiment.
What do you hope to accomplish in your tenure as Poet Laureate?
I want people to be excited about poetry, I want them to read and write poetry.
Ms. Jackson shared an unpublished new poem, exclusively for N’DIGO.
A Gathering of Tulips
The tulips, purple and yellow,
Gather on both sides of the door
Of the doctor who promises to give
My mother clear sight.
We are happy to see flowers
Stretching up, on elegant lines,
Opening their mouths
To sing us into spring for a moment.
Some of them, purple, are still closed
As people who keep secrets, like me,
And some of the yellow are opening
To receive new breath
So they can sing louder
And wake the dead.
I want to open my lips
And sing like these.
Two choirs of tulips gather and send up
A rousing gospel shout — I never would have made it
Through the blind nights of winter.
Now through this sign of flowers, upright, opening —
got the Victory.
It is a promise I believe —
Soon and very soon — everybody will see.
Everybody will sing.
