‘Lullaby for the Grieving’: Alabama’s poet laureate on her journey through loss and hope

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Ashley M. Jones was on a roll. It was 2021 and she had just been named the youngest and first Black poet laureate in Alabama. Soon after, her father died without warning. Her latest poetry collection, Lullaby for the Grieving, is out Tuesday. Jones spoke about the work and began by describing her first visit to the site of the Bloody Sunday Voting Rights Act march in Selma.   

The following is taken from an interview with Jones. It was edited for length and clarity.

I was fortunate enough to be invited on a pilgrimage that the Faith and Politics Institute does every year. They take people from Congress, and apparently me, to go on this pilgrimage across the bridge and learn about Bloody Sunday and all the things that happened during that time. 

I’m deep in thought in this very strange moment as we’re driving. And it’s a very tree-filled drive, like every other in Alabama. My mind starts drifting and I started to think about my dad. 

I started to think about what I was going to see at the bridge because at this time I hadn’t yet seen the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I didn’t really know what was gonna happen to me, physically and emotionally, facing this bridge where so many people were hurt for senseless reasons. 

So I wrote this poem. And it’s called, “On my way to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I think of my father.”

“I don’t know when will be the last days 

of my life. Today, on the road from Montgomery

to Selma, I can’t help but think of death. Can’t help

but hear its familiar quiet settling down on the bright 

green land. There is something in the memory 

of protest called fear. Still. I feel it when I remember 

the way some men beat the soft pulp 

of the marchers’ bodies until it was a paste. 

I remember the way my skin signifies, sometimes, 

chains and the necessity of force. Of death. 

Any day could be my last. 

I don’t know who will be there when it’s my time to go, 

whether by nature or by force. I wonder 

if my father knew it was coming when he died, 

if he had a moment to see the sky before 

it went black. If he smelled the sweetness 

of the breeze as it passed him. I hope he thought of me, 

of all of us. I hope he wished us well…”

A lot of the book is really just me trying to understand, what am I now and what can I be, or how can I transform this relationship that’s now lost to me. 

The themes of this book, what you might encounter – obviously grief, but not just personal grief. There’s also the larger political grief. You also see joy in this book.

There’s a lot Black, lots of Black stuff. I’m always going to write about Black people. With no shame. 

I’m a Black Southern woman. What does that mean in this place? And that could be a lifetime’s worth of exploration. 

Black artists, you know, writers, musicians, whoever – one thing that it seems we’re constantly doing and have been doing forever is simply saying, “We are human.” Like there’s a bunch of other stuff that we’re saying, but underneath that, at least for me, that is what I am saying. I’m saying “I’m a human being. I’m a human being, I’m just like you.”

So there’s a lot of history and there’s a little music in here.

But the experience of doing the work and allowing myself to process the grief through poetry, it was surprising because I thought I would just be sad. And that wasn’t always the case. And I hope that’s evident in the book that there are surprising moments of life that still happen while you’re in the middle of an overwhelming grief. So yes, a lot of these poems, I’m really sad. But there are also these moments of joy thinking about him and funny things he did. 

The biggest thing I hope people get from this book, from my work, I hope they understand how valuable each human being is and how we should cherish them while they’re alive, after they’re gone. Maybe they will come away from the book being a little bit kinder to other people and making different choices about how they walk in the world. 

Editor’s note: Corrected to indicate Jones was named poet laureate in 2021.