Junious Ward

Junious “Jay” Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte’s inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.

Interviews

Junious Ward

Apr 27, 2026

Redaction Driven by Revelation: A Conversation with Crystal Simone Smith

“As poets there’s the option to reach beyond our internal afflictions and we don’t need to go very far. Historical documents offer us more than what’s rendered. I think of them as a tool to disrupt domination.”
Interviews

Junious Ward

Nov 12, 2025

The End is the Place We Begin: A Conversation with Marissa Davis

I remember, too, reading some time ago someone describe Black Americans as being part of a post-apocalyptic culture. We’ve survived the worst: the belly of the slave ship; the tortures wrought upon generation after generation of our ancestors for centuries.…
Interviews

Junious Ward

Oct 23, 2024

Seduced from Line to Line: A Conversation with Christian J. Collier

I want the work to sing on the page and, if someone were to read it aloud, sing as it exists in the air.
Interviews

Junious Ward

Feb 12, 2024

Writing a Poem as An Act of Faith: A Conversation with Yalie Saweda Kamara

Each day returning to this book teaches me something else. It teaches me about the height of my optimism.

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Junious Ward

Redaction Driven by Revelation: A Conversation with Crystal Simone Smith

The End is the Place We Begin: A Conversation with Marissa Davis

Seduced from Line to Line: A Conversation with Christian J. Collier

Writing a Poem as An Act of Faith: A Conversation with Yalie Saweda Kamara