Every Hard Sweetness

Sheila Carter-Jones is the author of Three Birds Deep, the winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award. She is also the author of the chapbooks Blackberry Cobbler Song and Crooked Star Dream Book and her poems have been published in numerous literary journals. She received her MFA from Carlow University where she facilitates writing workshops for the Madwomen in the Attic Program. Sheila Carter-Jones lives in Pittsburgh PA.

“Every Hard Sweetness is an extraordinary work of history and possibility. Within the brutal conditions of every state-sanctioned terror against her family, the poet makes a brilliant record of a deeply disciplined, steadfast tenderness. Placing her art practice beside that of her father’s, she asks readers to think with her about personal, familial, and national imaginations. Out of these conditions, Sheila Carter-Jones creates a stunning, experimental work that pushes on the edges of what language can even hold, making a work that asks its readers to engage in an ongoing practice of attention, scrutiny, and care. These arrangements touch me into new thinking and feeling, across time.” — Aracelis Girmay, author of the black maria“Every Hard Sweetness is testament to the adage that stories indeed matter, especially a story as powerful as this one. Through her expert command of richly textured language and striking imagery, Sheila Carter-Jones chronicles the racism that led to her father’s detainment at a state hospital for the criminally insane, the resulting family trauma, their attempts to recover, and her own ongoing struggles as a Black female in America. With the authoritative and unflinching voice of an emotional historian, these poems document and expose the racism and bigotry that still haunt America, through the personal as well as public lens. And yet, for all the hard moments of this story, there is also a kind of sweetness in the way that the poet renders tender family moments, honors victims of injustice, commands herself in the world, rises above it, and holds on to hope.” — Richard Blanco, Presidential Inaugural Poet"In powerful and incandescent poems, Carter-Jones deftly navigates the ongoing repercussions of this haunting family history—revealing cultural contexts of colorism, misogynoir, and white supremacy. This extraordinary and important book illustrates the ways in which anti-Black violence can be brutally whitewashed under the guise of institutional and bureaucratic complicity. At the same time, Every Hard Sweetness insists on celebrating Black courage, Black resilience, and Black joy in poems that are riveting, heartbreaking, and gorgeous.” — Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50“Every Hard Sweetness is a fabulous combination of old school storytelling and vibrant hybrid experimentation. On one hand, Sheila Carter-Jones masterfully weaves poems out of genres of history, memoir, and folklore— even archival photographs and visual art act as poetry in this inventive collection. On the other hand, whatever the form, Carter-Jones weaves masterful stories from the mercurial feelings and rhythms of everyday experience. Every time I read this brilliant book some new mastery unfolds. Sheila Carter-Jones is simply a badass poet.” — Terrance Hayes, author of Lighthead“In Every Hard Sweetness, Sheila Carter-Jones refracts a personal story and larger history of America: her father’s unjust six-and-half-year incarceration in a mental hospital in the 1960s and her coming-of-age and coming to terms with the trauma of her family’s story is set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and the ongoing struggle for freedom for Black Americans. Carter-Jones powerfully wields various forms, including photographs, to recover the past, resulting in a work that is a moving testament to the “art of staying alive.” In poem after poem, Carter-Jones counters erasure, fearlessly “filling the geography of silence.” — Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone