BIO
Jay Bernard is a multifaceted poet, artist and activist. Born in 1988, they grew up in London and identify as both black and queer, using non-binary pronouns. After obtain a degree in English at the University of Oxford, Bernard started to share their literary voice through experimental poetry and multimedia performances on the stage. They were a member of the second cohort of The Complete Works, a national writing collective which is aimed at amplifying the voices of Black British poets. This helped to refine their pen under the guidance of established writers. In addition, Bernard was co-editor of Oxford Poetry, and currently work as a programmer for London’s LGBTQ film festival BFI Flare. In 2018, they were elected as a fellow of the Royal Society for Literature.
The writings by Bernard are marked by multimodal elements and a critical perspective on socio-political discussions around race, queerness and the archive. Though the artist identifies as queer, they share aesthetic techniques with authors in the field of contemporary Black British women’s writing. Their earliest pamphlets include Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (2008) and English Breakfast (2013). In 2016, Bernard published another pamphlet entitled The Red and Yellow Nothing, exploring the experiences of a black knight in Arthurian legend. It was shortlisted for various prizes and provided the poet with a significant amount of popularity. This piece was followed by her multimedia performance Surge: Side A, which won the Ted Hughes Award in 2017 and was later translated to the page.
Bernard’s most recent and critically acclaimed poetry collection is entitled Surge (2019), a volume which resulted from the poet’s extensive research at the George Padmore Institute, a research center and archive which holds materials on radical black history in Britain. The poems trace the connection between the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, New Cross Massacre of 1981 and the Windrush Scandal in the UK. The interplay between the personal and the political is placed centre stage here, as Bernard interweaves their own struggles with race and sexuality into the narrative. In turn, the poet was shortlisted for various prizes, including the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize and Dylan Thomas Prize.
Alongside their writing, Bernard has directed a short film, Something Said (2017), which was screened at different festivals across Britain as part of their multimedia performance Surge: Side A. The audio-visual piece illustrates the experiences of Yvonne Ruddock’s during the new Cross Massacre and draws upon archival documents. In addition, the poet regularly publishes fictional and non-fictional works for international newspapers and journals such as Wasafiri and The Guardian.
Selected Prizes and Nominations
• Respect Slam 2004
• Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2005
• Ted Hughes Award 2016
• Ted Hughes Award 2017
• T.S. Eliot Prize 2019
• Dylan Thomas Prize 2020
• Ondaantje prize 2020
• Polari Prize 2020
Bio by Tara Brusselaers & Carmijn Gerritsen.
Bibliography
Bernard, Jay. Surge. Chatto & Windus, 2019.
—. Other Uniquities. Self-published, 2017.
—, director. Something Said. Self-published, 2017.
—. The Red and Yellow Nothing. Ink, Sweat and Tears Press, 2016.
—. English Breakfast. Math Paper press, 2013.
—. Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl. tall lighthouse, 2008.
—. “Stranger in the Archive.” The Poetry Review, vol. 107, no. 3, 2017, n.p.
—. “Interview with Jay Bernard.” Granta, 6 Jan 2021.
Bernard, Jay, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris and Nisha Ramayya. Siblings. Monitor Books, 2024.
—. “Speaking Out: Ted Hughes Winner Jay Bernard on Exploring the New Cross Fire in a One-Off Performance.” Interview with Claire Armitstead, The Guardian, 5 April 2018
Brady, Andrea. “The Anti-Austerity Poetics of the Archive: Jay Bernard’s Surge and Holly Pester’s go to reception and ask for Sara in red felt-tip.” Études Anglaises, vol.76, no. 1, 2023, pp. 47-65.
Brusselaers, Tara. “Breaking the Mould: Multimodality in Jay Bernard’s Surge and Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia.” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 47, no. 2, 2024, pp. 81-91.
Crown, Sarah. “Generation Next: The Rise – and Rise – of the New Poets.” The Guardian, 16 Feb 2019.
Davies, Dominic. “The City of the Missing: Poetic Responses to the Grenfell Fire.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 49, no. 3, 2023, pp. 584-599.
Fernández Campa, Marta. “Counter-Narratives in Black British and Caribbean Art in Britain.” Memory and the Archival Turn in Caribbean Literature and Culture, Springer International Publishing, 2023, pp. 175-221.
Jayakumar-Hazra, Cathie Kanagavalli Lakshmi. ““For here, we have not an enduring city, but we are looking for the city to come”: Dysgraphia of disaster and wayward Black futures in Jay Bernard’s Surge (2019).” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 58, no. 3, 2022, pp. 374-387.
Lau, Carolyn. “Songs of Experience: Jay Bernard’s English Breakfast and Ami’s The Desire to Sing After Sunset.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, no. 26, 2021, n.p.
Launchbury, Claire. “Grenfell, Race, Remembrance.” Wasafiri, vol. 36, no. 1, 2021, pp. 4-13.
Lawson Welsh, Sarah. “Jay Bernard’s Surge: Archival Interventions in Black British Poetry.” Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings, vol. 6, no. 2, 2022, pp. 1-26.
Leetsch, Jennifer. “Between Home and Away: Contemporary Black British Poetry.” The Routledge Handbook of New African Diasporic Poetry, edited by Lokangaka Losambe and Tanure Ojaide, Routledge, 2024, n.p.
López-Ropero, Lourdes. “Two London Fires and a Critique of Grievability: Mournful Protest, the Black Elegy, and Jay Bernard’s Surge (2019).” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 60, no. 3, 2024, pp. 315-330.
Lowe, Hannah. “Inside the Frame: Women Writing and the Windrush Legacy: Interviews with Grace Nichols, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Jay Bernard.” Wasafiri, vol. 33, no. 2, 2018, pp. 3-9.
Mann, Justine. “Capturing, Collaborating, and Curating: A Community-Led Approach to Contemporary Born-Digital Literary Archives.” Cultural Heritage and the Literary Archive: Objects, Institutions, and Practices Between the Analogue and the Digital, edited by Tim Sommer, Routledge, 2024, n.p.
McCarthy Woolf, Karen. “A Shimmering Crucible: Twenty-First Century Black British Diaspora Poetries.” Prairie Schooner, vol. 97, no. 3, 2023, pp. 97-99.
—, editor. Ten: The New Wave. Bloodaxe Books, 2014.
McCarthy Woolf, Karen and Teitler, Nathalie, editors. Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets, Bloodaxe Books, 2023.
Parmar, Sandeep. “Surge by Jay Bernard Review – Tragedy and Solidarity.” Rev. of Surge, by Jay Bernard, The Guardian, 6 July 2019.
Sullivan, Marek. “Jay Bernard’s Explosive Poetry and the Long Shadow of Racism in Britain.” Frieze, 23 Sept 2019.
