John Murillo: Poetry and the battle for racial equity

Sam Gill is senior vice president and chief program officer at John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In this role, he oversees all of Knight’s grantmaking programs — Community and National Initiatives, Journalism, and Arts. He also oversees Learning and Impact, Knight’s research and assessment program. Sam is the host of the podcast The Future of Democracy, a weekly conversation about the trends ideas and disruptions changing the face of democracy.

John Murillo is the author of the poetry collection, Up Jump the Boogie, finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award. His poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2017 and 2019. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books) John Murillo’s second book is a reflective look at the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against Blacks and Latinos and the personal and societal consequences of long histories of subjugation. A sparrow trapped in a car window evokes a mother battered by a father’s fists; a workout at an iron gym recalls a long-ago mentor who pushed the speaker “to become something unbreakable.” At the heart of the book is a sonnet crown triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended meditation on the history of racial injustice and the notion of payback as a form of justice. Poet Carolyn Forché called Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry “a lyric burst of virtuosity and passion long in coming, something between song and prayer, centered on a fifteen-sonnet redoublé on the subject of murderous racism and the rage that pushes against it.[…] Murillo is a poet for his time […].”