Reparations Now!

Ashley M. Jones is the 2022-2026 Poet Laureate for the state of Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel and dark / / thing. Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival.

"Reparations Now! offers a diverse, complex collection of poems in response to historical and contemporary racism. In a few lines, she can slip from weary to witty to wary—but never defeated." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World "In poems that showcase a wide formal range, Jones (Magic City Gospel) expertly juxtaposes historical moments and incidents with personal history in her impressive third collection. This entry is full of heartbreaking and memorable observations, providing a necessary portrait of the ceaseless violence endured by Black Americans, and the long struggle for justice." —Publishers Weekly, starred review "Jones clearly has come into her own, offering, perhaps, the most unabashed version of her incisive observations about what it means to be Black, a woman, and sensitive to the connection between history and the contemporary moment." —Jacqueline Allen Trimble, The Rumpus "Every poem sings an aria in this collection, be it somber, enraged or joyously boastful. From structure to flourish, Jones manifests space to feel all of the feelings that come with being Black in a world that constantly seeks to snuff out Blackness." —Ashia Ajani, EcoTheo Review "In a book that is balancing history, trauma, rage, and joy as brilliantly as Reparations Now! is, there must be something beyond language that grips and holds a reader in place. For this, I am thankful for the generosity of this book, how the poems are shaped, how they challenge the eye as well as the ear, with rich payoffs at the end. I am thankful for the population of this book -- how it bursts with ancestors and homages, places rendered so stunningly that they are present and touchable. What a massive undertaking, and what an achievement." —Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Fortune For Your Disaster "Our present day, as well as the days at our backs, are stunned by their own particular sorrow. There is much lamentation to disorder the air. There are legions of hushed black bodies. There is that numbing loneliness, the taciturn breaking of hearts in the midst of chaos. But there is also, always, James Brown's unearthly squeal, his miraculous camelwalk. There is a mother's blaze-warm voice on the line from home. There is God in a father's hands, in Mahalia's reverent wail, in a sunlit home. Here in these pages of unerring witness, the poet reckons with a seemingly ceaseless grief while acknowledging the light that keeps us facing forward--the fact that being beautiful and black does not require a revolution." —Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize "Ashley M. Jones is a genius in how she wields, innovates, and wades through a bounty of poetic forms (sonnets, an aubade, a ghazal, a contrapuntal, anaphora, the subjunctive mode and so much more) with a sense of mastery, levity, and play. This collection is jam-packed with music, grace, and grit. I felt loved and seen by Reparations Now! The book is a personal mix CD in verse curated by Black bliss and brilliance. I kept dog-earring pages for prompts and poems I wanted to read again until I realized the whole collection was mangled by my enthusiastic appreciation and inspiration." —Tiana Clark, author of I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood