Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley Jones reflects on memorable 2021

Ashley Jones

Ashley Jones is the youngest ever poet laureate in Alabama, and also the first person of color to hold the title.

This story is part of AL.com’s series “21 Alabamians who made a difference in 2021,” highlighting people who have made our state a better place to live this year. Stories in this series will publish each day from Dec. 5 to Dec. 31. Find all stories in the series as they publish here, and read about the Alabamians who made a difference in 2020 by clicking here.

Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones had a memorable 2021.

“It was a huge year in every possible way,” she said. “This was the year my third book released, ‘Reparations Now!’ It has been received really well. I’m really proud of this book. It’s taken me so many places, including ‘Good Morning America,’ which I did not expect. That was really great.”

The highs were very high, but the lows were very low. Her father, Donald Jones, former assistant fire chief for Birmingham Fire and Rescue for 26 years, had only been fire chief for Midfield Fire Department for about a year when he died in April at age 59.

“This year has been a year of great tragedy for me,” Jones said. “Of course, being named poet laureate of Alabama was really exciting, bittersweet of course because I didn’t have my dad here to celebrate it with me.”

Jones, at 31, is the youngest-ever poet laureate for Alabama and is also the first person of color to be named to the position. She’ll serve in that post from 2022-26.

“It’s really exciting and a turning point or at least an opportunity point for our state since I am the first person of color and the youngest to serve,” Jones said. “We may be entering a different kind of conversation about race and equity in Alabama. I’m hopeful that that conversation can continue in earnest over the next four years and beyond.”

Gov. Kay Ivey gave her an official commendation at the appointment ceremony at the old State House in Montgomery on Dec. 1.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” she said. “Just blocks away from where we were there’s the site of the slave auction block. In the room in which I was commissioned there’s a plaque commemorating Alabama’s secession from the union, which was decided on in that very room. There’s definitely a lot of spirits in the air. I definitely don’t think that my appointment is the solution to all the problems we’re still facing in our state. But I do think it was important to recognize what happened in that room and what was happening that day in that room. A Black woman was standing there being very vocally Black and proud of it, with a book about reparations, being named poet laureate in the very room where people decided that they wanted to protect the institution of slavery at all costs.”

Read more here:

Birmingham writer, UAB grad wins national award

How Ashley M. Jones Became the Most Influential Poet in Alabama

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